Nottingham, UK based Filtertechnik have won a maor test rig contract from Meggitt PLC. The contract worth £566,000 and is one of the biggest ever won by Filtertechnik and is to to design, manufacture and supply specialist test rigs to flush and test complex aerospace heat exchangers. The work is part of Meggitts £130M investment in its new facility in Ansty Park, Coventry, UK.
Headquartered in Ansty, near Coventry, Meggitt is a leading international company specialising in high performance components and subsystems for the aerospace, defence, and selected energy markets.
The design of these innovative test rigs requires a deep understanding of pressure, temperature and flow characteristics and fluid cleanliness. This is a key requirement in many advanced engineering sectors such as aerospace, motorsport and off-highway earth moving and quarrying equipment. Filtertechnik, and its sister company Hydrotechnik, are specialist manufacturers and suppliers of advanced test and data logging equipment as well as fluid cleanliness solutions for hydraulic and fluid systems. Test rigs for F1, end of production testing and R&D proof/cyclic/burst testing are all part of the groups expertise.
The Meggitt rigs form part of an end of production test line and are designed to work on a number of heat exchanger products. A flushing rig will provide forward and reverse flushing cycles to both sides of the heat exchangers, removing all traces of production contamination through advanced filtration and specific flow dynamics. The heat exchangers are then subject to a series of flow and pressure tests to check differentials and valve cracking and ensure pressures are all within tolerance. Highly accurate flow meters and pressure sensors are deployed for this part of the test with all results being logged to a central server as well as being displayed locally on the test rig HMI (Human Machine Interface). Each heat exchanger will have a clear pass/fail indication at every step of the testing process. All tests will be stored on a central database for reporting and traceability purposes.