AERONAUTICS

Space Electronics offers a wide variety of mass properties testing solutions for the aeronautics industry.

[ Turbine Blades ] [ Aircraft Engines ] [ Wings and Control Surfaces ]

Turbine Blades

Space Electronics offers the best balancing solutions for individual blades. We manufacture the widest range of blade balancing machines (also known as moment weight scales) for jet engines.

• We offer two series of multi axis machines for fan blades to accomodate all needs: vertical or horizontal loading of the blades, automatic range selection features, several accuracy levels.

Fan Blade loaded vertically on a MW40KF tri axis Moment Weight Scale

Vertical loading makes it easy for the operator to load and unload the blade. This is particularly important for fan blades, which can weigh 50 lb or more. Our instruments are the only one in the world to offer this feature.

The blade is loaded vertically. The moment weighing instrument rotates the blade to the two measurement positions (which are horizontal), takes readings, and rotates the blade back to vertical position for unloading.

These moment weight scales are the instrument of choice of General Electric and Pratt&Whitney to measure fan blades.

Same tri axis Moment Weight Scale during measurement

The use of advanced technologies (force restoration transducers and hemispherical air bearings) make this instrument 30 times more accurate than a traditional moment weighing scale.

These moment weight scales are the instruments of choice of General Electric and Pratt & Whitney to measure fan blades.

• Our one axis moment weight scales are ideal for measuring high pressure and low pressure stages of aircraft engines. Our one axis scales come in two different series: a high accuracy series featuring the highest accuracy on the market; and a low-cost version providing the same accuracy as traditional designs.

• Our blade optimization software, also called blade distribution software, calculates the best combination of blades that minimizes the overall unbalance of the rotor stage. Our blade distribution software accounts for a given unbalance of the hub.

Details of our machines are available on our moment weight page.

Aircraft Engines

Our KSR and MP series of instruments are ideal to measure the mass properties of aircraft engines.

Aircraft Engine on a KSR

Measuring center of gravity and moment of inertia of an aircraft engine in three axes is relatively easy, as long as the fixture is adequate.

The fixture on this picture was custom made by Space Electronics. It enables the motor to be positioned in all three axes on the KSR instrument.

Wings, Rudders, and Control Surfaces

Our KSR series of instruments are also used to measure moment of inertia and center of gravity location of control surfaces, wings, and rudders.

Rudder on a GB series of moment of inertia instrument

Measuring the moment of inertia of control surfaces can be difficult because of their windage, which damps the oscillations rapidly.

All the parameters of our moment of inertia instruments can be adjusted to account for this rapid damping, allowing measurements of large objects with a lot of windage.

Fixtures are also very important when measuring control surfaces. The fixture must be optimized for weight and moment of inertia relative to the payload. The fixture on this picture was custom made by Space Electronics.