Fly By Wire Design Problems
I participated in an interesting discussion at Kevin Barry's, a really interesting Irish Pub in Savannah, Georgia, re" Fly By Wire" design issues. The chat was about the now dead Commanche Program and a problem that was discovered when the US Army requirement specifiying two identical cockpits for the aircraft two crew members. The original thought was to simply crew training requirements and provide for redundancy.
What seemed to be a major concern by the Army was the possibility the FBW flight control system could be confused by two simultaneous but different control inputs.....say.....rear seater applies left cyclic....and front seater applies right cyclic such as in an emergency manueuver to avoid a tree while flying at low level.
As I heard it....Sikorsky say it was not a problem....as during testing no such problems were encountered but the Army was not satisfied with the test criteria and the resulting statement by Sikorsky.
Anyone know anything about this kind of thing?