Clearance of flight control laws for carefree handling of advanced fighter aircraft

Abstract

Clearance of fighter aircraft poses additional challenges compared to civilian transports due to the high agility and performance of the vehicles, their larger flight envelope, different mission types and higher instability. The carefree handling concept of modern fighters, which is a mandatory requirement for the flight control laws to reduce pilot work load, further increases the challenges for the assessment task. Carefree handling means, that the flight control system allows any pilot inputs while it takes care of the structural and aerodynamic limits of the aircraft and simultaneously maximizes aircraft performance. The carefree clearance covers however only manoeuvres that are meaningful for the respective configuration and phase of flight. The required analysis techniques to provide such a clearance are explained. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.