Irvin-GQ Ltd
Testing Heavily Loaded Parachutes - A Different Philosophy
Andrew Cowley
Irvin-GQ Ltd
In 1992, following protracted negotiations with which many will be familiar in a multi-national, multi-agency project, Irvin Aerospace Limited (IAL) were awarded a contract to develop and manufacture a brake parachute system for the Typhoon, nee Eurofighter, nee EFA aircraft. The project comprised the development of a deceleration system that had previously been used in the UK EAP aircraft and was primarily required to assist the conventional wheel brake system. IAL's prime contractor was the Spanish aircraft company EADS-CASA and it is much appreciated that they have given their permission for this paper, however, the reader will appreciate that there is a requirement that no restricted data relative to the design is published within this paper or accompanying presentation.
As many in the SAFE type organisations will be aware, aircraft designers primarily think in 'hard' materials (metals, plastics, carbon fibres etc.) invariably not textiles (soft woven fabrics - Nylon, Kevlar © etc, and of necessity the add-ons of safety equipment are secondary in importance to that which is needed to provide the aircraft with its extraordinary performance. This, as usual, led to unique challenges to the IAL. For example, the brake parachute deceleration system is housed in a container that is mounted neatly above and between the twin-engine exhausts. This resulted in a parachute system that had to be heat tolerant, needed a capability of deploying directly and reliably into turbulent engine efflux and, as with every aircraft parachute requirement, a high drag relative to a light mass and low volume.
GQ Parachutes Limited and Irvin Aerospace Limited were amalgamated into one company, Irvin-GQ Limited, and the novated EFA contract continued in Wales. The company is soon to become known as Airborne Systems Europe. The test programme for the development aircraft brake parachute system was completed in May 2003 and a Final Declaration of Design and Performance (FDDP) was issued and accepted by Eurofighter.
For various reasons, the production aircraft grew in mass relative to the original development aircraft and, as a consequence, the landing speeds increased. A redesign of the braking systems was required to address the new requirement. Due to programme schedules, the production of brake parachutes was started ahead of the full qualification of the system. As a result, this necessitated a number of fleet leader parachutes on qualification trials whilst new aircraft were coming off the production line with parachutes that were only partially certified to the requirement specification. This paper deals with the latter stages of the design and test process.
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