Greater use of "virtual aircraft" in the fly-by-wire (FBW) design process could reduce the cost of flight control systems by up to 5%, says BAE Systems.
Virtual reality tools would enable engineers to better understand requirements for FBW systems to cut costs, say researchers working on the three-year, g10 million ($12 million) European Union-funded study. Other software recommendations include using neural networks and specialist algorithms to improve FBW control systems.
Keith Rosenberg, chief systems engineer at project participant BAE Systems Platform Solutions, says: "There are inefficiencies in designing the systems. Designers need better tools to design the hardware. We were looking to make better use of technology to bring the price down. We believe we can get a cost reduction of up to 5%."
The project - Affordable Digital Fly-By-Wire Flight Control Systems For Small Commercial Aircraft - found that emergency battery-powered electrical motors are an option for operating flight-control surfaces as a back-up, and that reduced FBW electronics redundancy could reduce costs.
The EU Fifth Framework project's participants included now-defunct Fairchild Dornier, Alenia Aeronautica, Israel Aircraft Industries, Greece's University of Patras and the Netherlands' Delft Technical University.
Source: Flight International