F. Arévalo Lozano, J. Barrera Rodríguez, Héctor Climent
DOI Number: N/A
Conference number: IFASD-2019-048
AIRBUS Defence and Space (AIRBUS-DS) has successfully designed, manufactured, and certified the Aerial Refuelling Boom System ARBS (or “Boom”) that is nowadays extensively operated by different Air Forces. The Boom is a deployable and retractable flexible beam hanged from the rear part of a taker-aircraft fuselage through which fuel can be transferred to a receiver aircraft at high fuel rates (Figure 1). The existing version of the AIRBUS-DS Boom system is a fly-by-wire device with flight control laws (FCLs) adapted to each flight phase and Boom configuration. These FCLs improve the flight mechanics handling qualities, mitigate the coupling of the flexible modes with the rigid motion, and allow the Boomer to perform high precision contacts with limited effort in calm weather or even in light-to-moderate atmospheric turbulence conditions. Next step on the AIRBUS-DS Boom project points towards improving the robustness and precision of the refuelling operation by including automatic controlled-by-computer Boom motion. The intervention of the Boomer could be ideally reduced to emergency or out-ofcontrol situations. All the engineering activities launched to support this project are embedded into the Automated Air-to-Air Refuelling (A3R) program. This paper summarizes the aeroelastic activities performed by AIRBUS-DS for supporting the design of the A3R Boom system, a high-precision automatic operation of the Boom with reduced human intervention. The Boom aeroservoelastic model used in the A330-MRTT Certification Phase has been revisited to include additional terms that are needed to increase the accuracy on the aeroelastic-related parameters that the A3R operation demands. In particular, the static aeroelastic deformation will depend on the rigid body excursions which are not well predicted by classical methods. Theoretical results obtained from an enhanced non-linear aeroservoelastic model show good matching with ad-hoc data-gathering flight tests. This model will be used to support the A3R flight control laws design and to improve the appearance of the Boom flexibility in the Boom simulator. Figure 1 An A330-MRTT tanker aircraft while refuelling to another A330-MRTT acting as receiver.