Quote from
RR_NDB:
A test 787 (ZA001) was hit by a lightning bolt and survived. (landed). During the Test phase or Certification process, the airliners are "lightning tested"?
Response from
DozyWanabee:
I don't think so, but the laws of probability suggest that many a FBW Airbus model has been struck by lightning in one form or another in their 23 years of airline service and not one has fallen from the sky because of it.
This is way outside my expertise, but those of us who were the first line pilots to fly the A320 had naturally taken some interest in the subject.
My recollection is that they had parked one on the military airfield at Istres (engines running) and bombarded it with radiation on a wide range of frequencies. The flight testing had also involved flying into deliberately-selected Cu-nims on a number of occasions. The story was that there had been one or two FCC trips, but that a normal reset had been achieved.
In 14 years on the A320, I was struck by lightning on about six occasions. The worst case was on the approach to Bilbao Rwy29. We lost both Radar transceivers, and after landing there was a hole in the radome you could have pushed your head through. However, at the time of the strike, we had no noticeable electrical transients, and no failures of EIS or FCCs.
Chris
PS
DozyWanabee's
post indicates that the A320's 2 ELACs (Elevator-Aileron) use the Motorola 68000, and its 3 SECs use the Intel 80186 (this was the late 1980s and PCs were in their infancy). As DW says, ELACs and SECs each have a command channel and a monitor channel. I think the software engineers writing the command channels were segregated from the team doing the monitor channels. My (no-doubt simplistic) layman's understanding was that each team received the requirements from the flight-control designers in the form of logic diagrams, using "and" gates and "or" gates. Instructions in plain English/French/German were strictly avoided.
The other key part of the A320 flight-control architecture are the 2 FACs (Flight Augmentation), which, among other things, calculate V-speeds and manage all the rudder (yaw) functions.
In my 14 years, I never experienced an FCC failure.