The Advanced Diagnostic Test Facility (ADTF) is a representation of a fuel system of a modern aircraft and its associated electrical power supply. The ADTF consists of a number of tanks, pumps, flow meters, pressure sensors, level sensors, three-phase motors, inverters, voltage sensors and current sensors. A wide range of different types of faults can be injected into the ADTF, which also has the capability for reconfiguring its fluid and electrical systems in the event of such faults being detected and isolated. Its primary purpose it to develop, investigate and assess a wide range of diagnostic and prognostic techniques.

The Structural Coupling Test Facility is part of an on-going project investigating the use of Kalman Filters for structural coupling. Structural coupling is the disturbance to the aircrafts inertial sensors caused by the flexibility in the airframe, and is particularly problematic for flight control systems (FCS) in modern combat aircraft. The current aircraft solution uses a series of notch filters to remove the structural frequencies, but these introduce significant phase delays into the FCS loop. The project is assessing an alternative approach based upon the use of Kalman filters to reduce the effects of structural coupling which offer significant advantages in terms of phase delays.

The Magnetic Levitation (MagLev) Test Facility will be used to develop modular processing resources that can be flexibly adapted and/or reconfigured. The concepts developed will be validated on the MagLev vehicle (200kg) with dual-wound magnets and duplicated sensors to provide functional redundancy that has been built for demonstrating system-on-chip concepts. This application has many similar features to those of an aircraft which make it an ideal laboratory facility to support the industrial requirements. These include multiple sensing and actuation channels linked by a complex high-performance controller, open loop unstable, and high-integrity requirements to ensure the functionality is maintained in the presence of faults. The idea is that the system will achieve continuous operation in the presence of (simulated) faults throughout the system in an environment of change e.g. changing function and/or components.