Advanced Aircraft Gas Turbine Engine Controls

Abstract

With the advent of vectored thrust, vertical lift, and fly-by-wire aircraft, the complexity of aircraft gas turbine control systems has evolved to the point wherein they must approach or equal the reliability of current quad redundant flight control systems. To advance the technology of high-reliability engine controls, one solution to the Byzantine General’s problem (Lamport et al., 1982) is presented as the foundation for fault tolerant engine control architecture. In addition to creating a control architecture, an approach to managing the architecture’s redundancy is addressed.