Cessna warms to fly-by-wire for Columbus, but system is a hybrid | Aviation International News

Cessna warms to fly-by-wire for Columbus, but system is a hybrid

Whenever a manufacturer develops a new airplane, engineers have the opportunity to incorporate new technology into the design.

By Matt Thurber • Editor-in-Chief

March 25, 2008

Whenever a manufacturer develops a new airplane, engineers have the opportunity to incorporate new technology into the design. With the large-cabin Columbus, Cessna engineers didn’t opt for a composite airframe or an all-electric systems architecture, but they have chosen an innovative approach to fly-by-wire flight controls. The Columbus system is Cessna’s first application of fly-by-wire flight controls, and the design of the system has features that are unique enough that the company has applied for patents on the system architecture.

In “traditional” fly-by-wire systems, cockpit controls–generally sidesticks–send signals to computers and then to actuators that move the flight control surfaces. The actuators are normally hydraulic, but this makes for heavier systems installations because of the need for redundant hydraulics.

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