Redundancy in Automatic Flight Control System Design for A General Purpose Helicopter

Abstract

Redundancy is a popular concept among autopilot design engineers due to the importance of safety in aviation. The main goal of redundancy in autopilot design is to eliminate or minimize the loss of a system in case of single point failures. In this study, the designed autopilot flight control system with redundancy for a general purpose helicopter is presented, along with the simulator and flight test results of the design. The designed system combines the elements of direct and functional redundancy to achieve a full redundant system. The simulator tests were done in the flight control simulator in Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) in Ankara, and the flight tests were done with the general purpose helicopter over Ankara Mürted airspace. The results of these tests verify the proposed design, ensuring the safety of the flight under different failure scenarios.

Keywords

• Automatic flight control system
• Redundancy management
• Sensor fault detection
• Functional redundancy
• Direct redundancy

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