During Rita’s development, Land Rover BAR realised that precision knowledge of their wing settings could be compromised by the tenuous link between the hydraulic actuators and the control surfaces or flaps.
These linkages are ropes with a high degree of compliance, so the position of each actuator is often only an approximate measure of the actual flap angle. They called on metrology experts at Renishaw to design a solution.
Technical leader for Renishaw’s encoder products division, Dr Finlay Evans and his team then set out to design a bespoke magnetic encoder solution, based around LinACE™ technology from Renishaw’s associate company RLS.
LinACE™ is an extremely robust absolute linear cylindrical encoder system designed for integration into hydraulic, pneumatic and electromechanical actuators as a feedback element for position or velocity closed-loop applications.
The position encoders were installed on the control surfaces of both the wing (flaps) and the port and starboard rudders. Numerous changes were made to ruggedise the LinACE™ encoder and make it durable enough for life at sea.
