A ground and operational vibration assessment of the RAAF PC-9/A airframe

The Pilatus PC-9/A is a high performance turbo-prop aircraft used since 1990 by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) primarily in a pilot training capacity. The aircraft's structural integrity management is supported by full scale fatigue test (FSFT) results. To supplement the FSFT and further evaluate aft fuselage and empennage manoeuvre and dynamic loading, a fleet aircraft was instrumented using strain gauges and accelerometers to be an operational loads monitoring (OLM) aircraft. The measurement of dynamic loads was included to facilitate fatigue assessments of empennage buffeting. This paper provides an overview of the structural dynamic and vibration test and analysis aspects of the PC-9/A OLM system development and associated ground and flight testing.