Flight Control Laws allow the automatic control and guidance of an aircraft. At AlphaLink, we offer the complete flight control law process including requirement definitions (SAE AS94900), selection of the control law structure (including protections, filters and observer), the computation of the control gains for the complete envelope, and validation with non-linear simulations and Software-in-the-Loop (SiL) simulations.
The designed automatic flight control laws cover the complete flight envelope consisting of take-off run, rotation, climb, cruise, turns, descent, approach, go-around (if required), flare and roll-out. Flight envelope protections prevent stall, high load factors, bank angle and over speed. In addition to automatic flight control laws, we offer the design of manual flight control to provide good handling qualities.
The design of the Flight Control Laws is carried out graphically using block diagrams, which have to be translated into software code. For the first implementation, we use MATLAB®/Simulink® and for code generation we use SCADE. To meet the highest level of software assurance, we use CompCert as a compiler, among others.
The verification of our designed flight control laws is carried out using our in-house avionic test rig. With our basic-cockpit (yoke or stick, thrust lever and pedals), automatic flight control panel and visual, we can test the flight control laws with pilot in the loop for manned aircraft. For unmanned aircraft, we use a remote controller, a ground station and a suitable visual to test the flight control laws with remote pilots.
In addition to the development of FCL for the entire aircraft, we also design control laws for subsystems like actuators.