After sixty years of unbroken service on a demanding and critical duty in the aerospace industry, some of the earliest Rotork valve actuators are being replaced with the company’s latest intelligent IQ3 actuators.
Dating from 1953, the Rotork Model 100A actuators were part of a contract to operate the valves on one of the world’s first large scale supersonic wind tunnels, the Transonic Wind Tunnel created for testing the effects of supersonic speeds on new aircraft designs. The wind tunnel was first commissioned in 1956. It has been in virtually continuous daily operation since then, testing military and civil aircraft from around the world.
Although designed for isolating valves, the Rotork 100A actuators have been performing modulating duties throughout their sixty years of service, constantly altering the position of large gate valves by small degrees to control the level of wind speeds and provide the data that is needed for the highly accurate measurement of test results. The automation of this process with a bespoke control system incorporating a Modbus control network has necessitated the replacement of these units with new IQ3M actuators that are specifically designed for modulating duties.
Because there is a constant demand to use the wind tunnel, the retrofit operations can completed in the brief periods available between test programmes. The first two actuators were removed and the replacement IQ3M actuators installed and commissioned in two days, half the allocated time allowed before the wind tunnel was due to re-start operations.
