Qualifying an aircraft fuel booster pump means reproducing a condition that's easy to describe and awkward to build on the ground: fuel tank pressure below ambient, the way it can be at altitude.
The ATF Fuel Pump Test Rig DTSN-82 solves this with a dual-direction pressure control loop on the ATF tank -- shop air on one side to pressurize it up to 3.2 kg/cm2 for boosted ground-condition testing, a vacuum pump on the other to pull it down, producing an absolute inlet pressure at the unit under test as low as 0.2 kg/cm2 to simulate the altitude cavitation margin the pump has to survive in real operation.
Around that pressure loop sits the rest of the measurement chain: delivered flow instrumented across the pump's full 500-150,000 LPH operating range at drive speeds to 1000 RPM, a circulating water heat exchanger holding fluid temperature within a 20-120°C window, and continuous filtration maintaining ATF cleanliness better than NAS 1638 Class-4 -- a standard that exists because the pump's internal clearances are precision-machined and particulate contamination introduced by the test rig itself would corrupt the very performance data the test is meant to produce.
Safety and materials compatibility get the same rigor: heat- and moisture-resistant wiring coded and routed through cable trays per IS norms for an ATF vapour environment, component-level and full-assembly leak testing under operating pressure before commissioning, and a hard-wired emergency shutdown independent of the control PLC.
Full writeup: https://neometrixgroup.com/products/pump-test-rig-DTSN-82
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