Evaluation Engineering - 15

Acromag VPX4520
carrier card.

consulting services to
guide teams to apply best
practices in development
workflows," he said.

MIL vs. commercial

coverage in a common desktop environment, so later phases can be streamlined.
Finally, engineers are able to automate
the implementation, easily use formal
methods for verification, and perform
functional testing where the full set of
evidences are automated."
MathWorks offers textual and graphical desktop design environments that
engineers use in traditional V-cycle and
agile development, Ramirez Perez said.
"On top of the base platforms MATLAB
for math and programming and Simulink
for simulation and model-based design,
a set of toolboxes for specific technologies is available providing predefined
algorithms. Engineers can find analysis,
design, and optimization products in the
main industries such automotive, aerospace, or semiconductors with algorithms
relating to areas including artificial intelligence, 5G, automated driving, and
radar and phased array, among others.
Model-based design horizontal products
cover engineering needs in most of the
V-cycle phases: systems, software, testing,
and integration."
He added that the just-released System
Composer for systems engineering and architecture complements mature products
for requirements validation and coverage,
software automatic code generation (C,
C++, HDL, PLC, or CUDA), formal methods and static analysis, and model-in-theloop, software-in-the-loop, and hardwarein-the-loop functional verification for
requirement-based testing.
"For complex environments and projects, MathWorks offers training and

Many of the products described in this article are
suitable for both military
and commercial aerospace test. According to
Semancik at MTS, "There
are many similarities between military
and commercial aerospace customers-
for example, the need for the manufacturer to implement and maintain qualitymanagement systems such as AS9100D
and AS5553.
Semancik continued, "Test result(s)
traceability is also important; therefore,
developing test systems with common user
interfaces and report generation capabilities resonates with both customer groups."
"The requirements of military and commercial aerospace customers are very
similar, with the overriding trend toward
increasing the use of commercial, off-theshelf (COTS) testing equipment in order to
reduce cost and lead times," said Eccles,
Murphy, and Blume at Bloomy Controls.
According to Nieves at Acromag,
"Communications standards are very
similar, but extensive certification requirements are higher in the MIL/aero market."
"All customers are looking for optimal
solutions that address both their unique
requirements and the constraints they
are dealing with," according to KRYTAR
marketing. "For military applications,
products are designed and constructed
to meet MIL-SPEC requirements."
Stasonis at Pickering commented, "Our
military and commercial aerospace customers share the common traits of demanding specifications, reliability, and
product availability for a long time."
However, Stasonis continued, "If there
is a difference between them, it is probably the military's need for secrecy. In
some cases, we are not allowed to know
what we will be testing. The commercial

industry is much more open with us.
Military presents a whole different dimension of test-for example, the military is looking at electronic warfare and
different communication protocols for
security and secrecy. Whereas, commercial applications may be more concerned
with seatback entertainment and taking
credit card info at 35,000 feet. So, it can
be different levels of complexity."
Eccles, Murphy, and Blume also cited
a divergence between military and commercial customers. "One obvious difference is security; however, most of our
aerospace customers have commercial as
well as military contracts, and therefore
Bloomy is ITAR-registered and has many
security procedures in place. Also, military-aerospace applications are increasingly using FAA certification processes
where previously they did not-even for
mission-related systems. There is also a
greater variety of military airborne systems than commercial systems in service,
and military systems tend to be reconfigured for different mission profiles, with
new sensor hardware, weapons systems,
and software requiring integration. Thus,
a military aerospace platform tends to
have a greater requirement for test/validation throughout its lifecycle."
vanEijkelenburg at Pacific Power
sited power-rating differences. "While
functional requirements are often similar between the two, military aerospace
customers generally need 115/200-VAC,
400-Hz, or 28-VDC power testing while
commercial customers are moving toward higher voltages for both AC and DC
power systems as well as higher frequencies up to 800 Hz," he said. "This is to support ever-increasing power demands of
large commercial airliners like the Airbus
A380 and Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Higher
AC and DC voltage reduces current levels,
allowing power switchgear and cabling to
be reduced in both size and weight, which
is important for on-board equipment."
Ramirez Perez at MathWorks also commented on differences. "The first difference
is the severity of the process and the standards that programs need to comply with,
which is due to the impact of a potential
failure in the system measured," he said.
"Engineers need to design their systems
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