Controlling the path of a flight vehicle involves sensing, processing, and actuation to “get” the vehicle to “go” to the desired location. This desired location can have many complementary components, including position, attitude, velocity, and angular rates. The aircraft industry typically refers to this function as flight control (FC), while the spacecraft industry typically refers to it as guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C). For the purposes of this chapter, FC is used when discussing topics generally applicable to both aircraft and spacecraft, while GN&C is used when discussing topics specific to spacecraft.

    Whether the system is an aircraft or a spacecraft, the same functional ability of determining where the vehicle is, how the vehicle is oriented, where the vehicle should go, and how the vehicle is going to get there is very similar. Yet, the perspective of FC health management (HM) for differing classes of vehicles may vary widely, from providing cost‐reducing benefits of improved maintenance operations, to performing time‐ and safety‐critical vehicle maneuvers.

    This chapter provides a perspective on FC HM as it pertains to the wide variety of vehicles (and their missions), an overview of the key elements of the FC subsystem and their varying HM functions, and examples of FC HM techniques.


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    Title :

    Flight Control Health Management



    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2011-07-15


    Size :

    13 pages




    Type of media :

    Article/Chapter (Book)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English