Andrew Doyle/HAMBURG
Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) is looking at the possibility of upgrading its Galaxy business jet with a digital fly-by-wire (FBW) flight control system being developed under a partially European Union (EU)-funded technology research programme.
The three-year second phase of the Affordable Digital Flight Control System for small commercial aircraft (ADFCS) project has just begun, with half of the €7 million ($6.6 million) cost being provided by the EU.
The work is being co-ordinated by BAE Systems Avionics with the participation of IAI, Alenia, Fairchild Dornier and several research and academic establishments.
The €3.6 million phase one, completed at the end of 2000, was headed by IAI, which views a future version of the Galaxy as a potential application for the ADFCS.
Though FBW has been successfully introduced on large Airbus and Boeing types, use of the technology on business jets and 50-seat regional jets has been more difficult to justify because of development costs.
The ADFCS team is seeking to develop a lower-cost FBW system by reducing the complexity of the control algorithms and the redundancy management system. The first phase of the programme studied various control systems which used fuzzy logic and neural networks for failure detection.
The FBW architecture and control algorithms were subsequently tested using a Fokker 100 flight simulator operated by Dutch research organisation NLR in Amsterdam for 45 "flights" over a total of nearly 70 hours.
IAI Commercial Aircraft Group manager flight control systems Moshe Attar presented the initial results of the project at the European Commission's Aeronautics Days 2001 conference in Hamburg. He believes that FBW "can be made affordable for small commercial aircraft". The benefits, he adds, include improved handling qualities and safety, plus reduced aircraft design, manufacturing and maintenance costs.
"We still have to convince our management that it is worthwhile but we are working on it," he says.
The second phase of the ADFCS project is focused on actuator technology, flying qualities and failure detection systems.
BAE Systems Avionics chief engineer Keith Rosenberg says the ADFCS promises to be "no more expensive than mechanical systems and could be cheaper."
Source: Flight International
