Airbus : No More Mechanical Rudders?

[Kimon]

Just to clarify: Is the A320 range fitted with a mechanical or electrical rudder as standard?
Does this mean that the only current mechanical fitted rudder on Airbus is on the A332 and electrical optional on A333 or is it now standard electrical on A333?
The A343 was a mechanical rudder and A345/6 electrical but they are out of production.
The A350 and A380 are electrical.
So bottom line: will Airbus soon be - if not already - an all-electrical rudder range?

[Bpalmer]

All the A330's that Northwest purchased from Airbus were the A330 Advanced with fly by wire (electric) Rudders. The fleet consists of 332 and 333 with deliveries that started in 2003. These aircraft also included the EIS-2 LCD instrument package & Pratt 4168 engines.

In the event of a complete electrical or flight control computer failure, the rudder is operated by separate rudder pedal transducers, a backup control module powered by a generator run by either the blue or yellow hydraulic system, which then commands the yellow and blue rudder hydraulic actuators.

[ElitePilot]

The 320's got mechanical cables from the pedals run all the way down the body up till the area below the fin where hydraulic servo jacks actually control the rudder surface.

[code0]

All computers fail (ELAC, SEC, FAC, etc) and have no control with FBW system, under DIRECT LAW, still A320 can be flown by mechanical Rudder (directional control) and THS (pitch control). But still you need to have Hydraulics powered up or in both HYD and computer fail, the RAT will supply 3000psi to the Yellow system to power up the actuators of Rudder and THS. THS and Rudder have no direct end to end cable system but they controlled by cables which connected to a HYD actuators which ultimately control the surfaces.

Code0