Gentlemen,
two cents regarding the loss of Rudder Travel Limiter, I stumbled upon a document which was put online by
Eurocockpit - Accueil. The document in question relates to a pair of serious incidents with loss of pitot probes on A330s, company Air Caraïbes Atlantique (ACA). Makes for a fascinating reading (in French).
The ACA incident produces a series of failures that are strikingly similar to what is deduced from the ACARS document we use as foundation for study here.
Full document at
http://www.eurocockpit.com/docs/ACA.pdf.
The document looks very solid from a technical point of view, full of nitty-gritty details, made after meetings between ACA people and AB people.
Back to RUD TRV LIM :
(Can't insert picture here... Anyway... Here is the gist of it, roughly)
As CAS becomes unavailable, maximum rudder deflection is 'frozen' (gelée) at about 10 degrees, however full rudder deflection will be recovered when SLATS are extended.
Since SLATS extension is purely mechanical (not linked to air data), we can reasonably conclude that a form of rudder limitation still exists (albeit a very primitive limitation, 10 degrees deflection) in the AF447 configuration.
Now is this 10 degrees limit useful in the situation ? At Mach 0.80 or so, would a full 10 degrees deflection be already too much for structure ?
Is the limit counterproductive ? I would like full deflection if I had to get out of a spin for example.