ABSTRACT

Fly-by-wire is an electronic system in which the control signals from the pilot's stick to the final actuation devices are electrical and are conveyed by wires to the actuators. Analogue forms of fly-by-wire control systems have been in existence for some time; for example, Concorde has had such a system since 1969. More recently, digital fly-by-wire has been used in the Airbus A310 and subsequent models. Fly-by-wire techniques have allowed new control strategies to be developed and successfully implemented. The four major sybsystems of the Experimental Aircraft Programme are interconnected by an avionics data communications system and a utilities data communications system. Both of these are based on the military standard MIL-STD-1553B which defines the physical and data link layer of the communications system. The flight control computers (FCCs), which interface the FCS to the other sybsystems via the avionics bus and utilities bus.