PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - AF 447 Thread No. 12
View Single Post
Old 23rd Jan 2015, 14:17
  #909 (permalink)  
vilas
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Wanderlust
Posts: 3,407
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
TC-DCA
In pitching plane when the stick is out of neutral pilot is asking for some load factor from flight control computers and it is proportionate to how much the stick is out in fore and aft plane. The elevators and stab position themselves to give you that by pitching up. When the stick is released and is neutral the elevators will maintain 1G. In normal law when speed(AOA) goes below Valpha prot the stick demands AOA and not load factor as in that zone between Valphaprot and Valphamax AoA is more critical and relevant. How ever in alternate law there is only Vsw(stall warning) and no V alphaprot or V alphaMax. So below VLS is it load factor or AoA demand is not clearly mentioned in the manual. As far as stab going full up you have to understand that the pilot kept the stick back all the time even below Vsw giving the system no choice. However the system design would have gradually kept trimming back once the nose was up even with stick neutral to keep 1G. Similarly if the stick was pushed forward it would have translated in to negative load factor demand and the elevators and stab would position to give you that and ultimately recover from stall but the pilot never did that for any length of time. Every time stall warning came he pulled the stick back instead of pushing forward. AF447 was manoeuvred beyond its design considerations by a pilot who was not competent to deal with unreliable speed situation nor was he capable of recovering from the resultant self induced stall. Conventional airplane don't trim back but they have been stalled by pilots through mishandling and crashed because of faulty stall recovery procedure. AF447 pilot would have never recovered from the stall in any aircraft.
vilas is online now