Research on a safety-critical architecture of large commercial aircraft fly-by-wire flight control system

doi:10.23919/JSEE.2025.000136

Journal of Systems Engineering and Electronics ›› 2025, Vol. 36 ›› Issue (5): 1296-1305.doi: 10.23919/JSEE.2025.000136

• SYSTEMS ENGINEERING • Previous Articles

Research on a safety-critical architecture of large commercial aircraft fly-by-wire flight control system

Zhishuai TANG¹^,²^,*(), Xianglong TANG¹(), Ye JIN¹(), Dansong CHENG¹(), Xinghua LIU²()

¹ Faculty of Computing, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
² COMAC Shanghai Aircraft Design and Research Institute, Shanghai 201210, China

Received:2024-04-01 Online:2025-10-18 Published:2025-10-24
Contact: Zhishuai TANG E-mail:tangzhishuai@live.com;tangxl@hit.edu.cn;jinye@hit.edu.cn;cdsinhit@hit.edu.cn;liuxinghua@comac.cc
About author:
TANG Zhishuai was born in 1987. He received his B.E. degree from Nankai University, Tianjin, China, in 2009. He received his M.S. degree from Beihang University, Beijing, China, in 2012. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree in Faculty of Computing, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China. His research interests are flight control and safety assessment of large aircraft. E-mail: tangzhishuai@live.com

TANG Xianglong was born in 1960. He received his Ph.D. degree in computer science from Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China, in 1995. He is a professor and a doctorial supervisor from Harbin Institue of Technology. His research interests include pattern recognition, machine learning, visual analysis of spacecraft equipment, and medical image processing. E-mail: tangxl@hit.edu.cn

JIN Ye was born in 1979. He received his Ph.D. degree from the School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China, in 2018. He is currently an associate professor at the Faculty of Computing, Harbin Institute of Technology. His research interests include content-based image analysis, pattern recognition, and machine learning. E-mail: jinye@hit.edu.cn

CHENG Dansong was born in 1972. He received his Ph.D degree from the School of Computer Science and Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China, in 2009. He is currently an associate professor at the Faculty of Computing, Harbin Institute of Technology. His research interests include pattern recognition, and machine learning. E-mail: cdsinhit@hit.edu.cn

LIU Xinghua was born in 1980. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China, in 2005 and 2011, respectively. His research interests are flight control and model-based systems engineering of large aircraft. E-mail: liuxinghua@comac.cc

Abstract

Abstract:

In view of the deficiencies in aspects such as failure rate requirements and analysis assumptions of advisory circular, this paper investigates the sources of high safety requirements, and the top-down design method for the flight control system life cycle. Correspondingly, measures are proposed, including enhancing the safety target value to 10^?10 per flight hour and implementing development assurance. In view of the shortcomings of mainstream aircraft flight control systems, such as weak backup capability and complex fault reconfiguration logic, improvements have been made to the system’s operating modes, control channel allocation, and common mode failure mitigation schemes based on the existing flight control architecture. The flight control design trends and philosophies have been analyzed. A flight control system architecture scheme is proposed, which includes three operating modes and multi-level voters/monitors, three main control channels, and a backup system independent of the main control system, which has been confirmed through functional modeling simulations. The proposed method plays an important role in the architecture design of safety-critical flight control system.

Key words: large aircraft, fly-by-wire flight control system, safety, common mode failure, backup control

Zhishuai TANG, Xianglong TANG, Ye JIN, Dansong CHENG, Xinghua LIU. Research on a safety-critical architecture of large commercial aircraft fly-by-wire flight control system[J]. Journal of Systems Engineering and Electronics, 2025, 36(5): 1296-1305.

Figures/Tables 10

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References 20

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Secondary computer 1 status	Secondary computer 2 status	Secondary computer 3 status	Backup system involved
Operation	Operation	Operation	No
Failure	Operation	Operation	No
Operation	Failure	Operation	No
Operation	Operation	Failure	No
Failure	Failure	Operation	No
Failure	Operation	Failure	No
Operation	Failure	Failure	No
Failure	Failure	Failure	Yes

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Research on a safety-critical architecture of large commercial aircraft fly-by-wire flight control system

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