Aircraft Control Architecture With Reconfigurable GEC Redundancy
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing aircraft systems such as hydraulic, flight controls, pneumatic, and avionics are typically designed and integrated separately, leading to inefficiencies in integration, weight, and increased inventory costs, with limited fault tolerance and robustness.
Innovation Solution
A reconfigurable electronic architecture using high-integrity, dissimilar generic controllers (GECs) connected via a high-performance digital bus, allowing integration of multiple systems and ensuring fault tolerance through dual computation and direct sensor connections, reducing weight and inventory costs.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If separate design and integration of hydraulic, flight control, pneumatic, and avionics systems is used, then system independence and specialized optimization are improved, but integration efficiency, weight, and inventory costs worsen
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges previously separate hydraulic, flight control, pneumatic, and avionics systems into a single integrated architecture where multiple systems share common processors, sensors, and communication buses. This consolidation reduces overall system complexity while maintaining functional independence through virtualization and modular software components.
Solution Approach 2:
The integrated architecture employs universal processors and controllers that can perform multiple functions across different systems. A single processor can handle flight control computations, monitor hydraulic pressures, manage pneumatic flows, and process avionics data, eliminating the need for dedicated hardware for each function and reducing inventory requirements.
2Reliability
If separate design and integration of multiple systems is used, then specialized system optimization is improved, but weight and inventory costs worsen
Solution Approach 1:
The patent consolidates multiple separate system components into a shared integrated platform. Common elements such as power supplies, communication interfaces, processing units, and sensor arrays are shared across hydraulic, flight control, pneumatic, and avionics systems, significantly reducing total system weight while maintaining specialized functionality through software partitioning.
3Device complexity
If traditional point-to-point digital buses are used for system integration, then communication simplicity is improved, but fault tolerance and system robustness worsen
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the communication architecture into multiple independent channels and redundant pathways. Instead of single point-to-point connections, the system employs redundant communication buses and distributed message routing, allowing information to traverse alternative paths if a particular connection fails, thereby enhancing fault tolerance.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically changes communication parameters such as message priority, transmission timing, and routing paths based on system state and detected faults. This adaptive communication strategy allows the system to maintain robust operation under varying conditions and recover from failures by reconfiguring communication parameters in real-time.
4Reliability
If separate system design is used, then individual system optimization is improved, but electronic capability utilization and cost efficiency worsen
Solution Approach 1:
The integrated architecture employs universal processors and controllers that can dynamically allocate computing resources across different systems based on demand. Electronic capabilities such as processing power, memory, and communication bandwidth are shared and optimized across hydraulic, flight control, pneumatic, and avionics functions, maximizing resource utilization while maintaining system independence through virtualization.
Data Source
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AI summary
A flexible distributed multi-system architecture for aircraft control integrates electronic computers comprising plural types of high integrity, dissimilar, generic and reconfigurable controllers (GECs) that can assume different purposes. GECs are configured as actuator controllers (able to control up to three channels including hydraulic or electro-mechanical actuators) or as Control Law Computers (able to calculate more sophisticated and processor demanding control laws). The multi-system architecture is built around a backbone of high performance, high integrity digital protocols and three hubs with dual connection to two different GECs.