USE OF RELIABILITY TECHNIQUES IN A COMBACT AIRCRAFT FLYING CONTROL SYSTEM DESIGN STUDY.

A pragmatic approach to the teaching of aircraft design is reported. Students will only be awarded an MSc degree if they have proved that they have the ability to produce workable, realistic designs in which all major problems have been addressed. Each student is given reponsibility for the desing of a major part of the aircraft, such as the subject of this paper - the flying control system of a supersonic vertical take-off fighter aircraft. This task involved the performance of many design tasks, an important one being the derivation of safety and reliability targets. This was followed by the prediction of the safety performance of the original system using empirical electronic and mechanical reliability data, augmented aby MIL-217 and other generic reliability data.