NASA sent us a video showing highlights from some of the recent flight testing of its X-48B blended wing-body technology demonstrator. As we wrote about yesterday, the aircraft recently finished the first phase of flight testing, demonstrating control throughout the flight envelope and the refinement of the flight control computer system.
As the video shows, the X-48B is one of the fancier remote-control airplanes around. Featuring three gas turbine engines, the 500-pound aircraft flies like the real thing. Test pilots are able to fly precise maneuvers from a mocked-up cockpit on the ground and are able to check out the view from the miniature cockpit using small cameras mounted in the nose of the airplane.
About halfway through the video during a closeup of the X-48B in flight, there is some high-frequency movement in the flight-control surfaces on the trailing edge of the aircraft. We talked to NASA Dryden and they confirm this is not flutter excitation testing. Instead, it is called perimeter identification testing. During this kind of testing, the team excites control surfaces to produce a response motion that can help define control surface movements and reactions for the aircraft and flight control computer.
On-board instruments monitor all the typical parameters watched during flight test including angle of attack, airspeed as well as roll and yaw. This information is fed to the ground team in real time and is carefully watched by engineers as well as the test pilot. It’s sort of a … ummmm … scaled-down version of the telemetry room used by Boeing during 787 flight testing.
No word if they scale it down to 8.5 percent of the TM room on Boeing Field in Seattle.
Video: NASA
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