Introduction to Fly-by-Wire Flight Control Systems: The professional pilot’s guide to understanding modern aircraft controls
By David Kern
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About this ebook
Why don't new aircraft designs allow the pilots a mechanical control connection? This book explains how fly-by-wire fixes the top 5 problems with mechanical controls for high performance aircraft. Rather than describe a particular aircraft’s design with confusing acronyms, readers will get a "behind the scenes" understanding for the critical concepts that apply to any modern aircraft. Because these design principles are easily described and understood, readers of this book will be armed with knowledge as they approach their flight manual procedures.
Including:
- Problems with mechanical flight controls
- Advantages of fly-by-wire
- How and why can fly-by-wire control systems fail?
- Why are four computers better than one or two?
- Explanations of the control laws used by business jets, fighters, and airliners
- What sensors are needed, and how the system maintains control when sensors are lost
- Design considerations for risk mitigation in case of component failures
Buy this book to read on your next layover!
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Introduction to Fly-by-Wire Flight Control Systems - David Kern
Copyright © 2021 by David Kern
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright owner.
Dedicated to professional pilots around the world – the ones that always wanted to fly, sacrificed much to achieve their dreams, and always striving to learn and improve. Your hunger for aviation knowledge creates margins of safety that will never be fully appreciated. Thank you for endeavoring to continuously learn as aviation technology races into the future.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Reinier for asking the questions that inspired this text.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Fundamentals of Fly-By-Wire
Fundamentals of controlled flight
Fundamental Problems with Mechanical Flight Controls
Fundamentals of Fly-By-Wire
Gain and Phase
Redundancy
Control Laws
Common Control Laws
Direct/Proportional Control Law
Angle of Attack (AoA) Command
G Command
G Command with speed scheduling
Pitch Rate Command and Flight Path Angle Command
Control Law Transitions
Sensors
Pilot Controls
Air Data
Inertial Reference and Acceleration
Flight control surface position
Aircraft systems status
Risk Mitigation
Conclusion
About the Author
https://www.DaedalusAero.Space/courses/fly-by-wire
Daedalus Aerospace Logo - Social Sharing smallThe Fundamentals of Fly-By-Wire
Before we begin, let’s lay out some assumptions. This text assumes that the reader is an aviation professional, or at least very familiar with aircraft. It also assumes that the reader has already used, or had some exposure to, fly-by-wire (FBW) systems. Most importantly, this text assumes that the reader would like to better understand how fly-by-wire systems are structured – without digging into any math or engineering diagrams.
This document is generic to a variety of civil aircraft manufacturers, including Boeing, Airbus, Gulfstream, Dassault Falcon, Embraer, Bombardier, and others. The text will seek to avoid making direct references to any specific manufacturer’s system terminology, but the terms chosen may sound more familiar to some users. This is not intended to directly address military fighter or powered lift (multi-copter) design considerations, although many of the system