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Meeting	ACGS Committee Meeting 133 - Asheville, NC - November 2024
Agenda Location	5 SUBCOMMITTEE A – AERONAUTIC AND SURFACE VEHICLES 5.4 B-47 Fly-By-Wire Development Program 1966-1969
Title	B-47 Fly-By-Wire Development Program 1966-1969
Presenter	Gavin Jenney
Available Downloads*	presentation
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Abstract	As the performance of aircraft has increased, so have the performance and reliability demands on flight control systems. Electro-hydraulic primary flight control systems (commonly called Fly-By-Wire) offer advantages over mechanical controls in meeting the increased demands. As of 1966, although the U.S. Space program and some foreign aircraft incorporated Fly-By-Wire, U.S. aircraft had not. To evaluate and demonstrate the advantage of Fly-By-Wire in large U.S. military aircraft, a Fly-By-Wire system was designed and flight tested in a B-47 test aircraft located at WPAFB, Ohio. The Fly-By-Wire system was applied to the pitch axis of the test aircraft. The development program started 1 August 1966 and was completed 21 Nov 1969. The program had three phases. Phase I was design and test pitch axis non-redundant electrical primary control with the control inputs generated by the normal control column motion. Phase II added a sidestick controller, pitch rate and nose acceleration feed back and electrical roll axis control to the Phase I system. Phase III used a four-channel redundant pitch actuator with hydraulically powered failure detection (Hydro-logic) in the Phase II system. Over one hundred flight test hours were accumulated on the Fly-B-Wire systems. A general improvement in the dynamic input response at high q was obtained from the Phase I system. A significant improvement in the handling qualities was obtained with motion feedback and the sidestick-controlled Phase II and III systems. The quad-redundant Hydro-logic actuator used in Phase III removed all injected failures with negligible deviation of the aircraft and did not exhibit random disconnects.