TABLE OF CONTENTS [1]Flight control is an interesting and technically challenging subject for which a wide range of engineering disciplines have to align their skills and efforts, in order to establish a successful system design. Ambitious aircraft programmes and the hard competition between aircraft manufacturers motivate sustained striving towards flight control systems (FCSs), which provide improved performance and towards a more efficient development process. To achieve these goals, all available resources need to be utilised, requiring coordination and close collaboration between different and independent organisations, in order to make the best use of:
the excellence of university institutes, which educate the next generation of engineers and provide basic research and theory;
the capability of research departments, which develop improved methodologies and new technologies;
the competence and capabilities of industrial design offices, which have to apply theory and new technologies to new products within stringent cost and time limits;
the significant experience of the customer in the operation of aircraft and in the definition of future aircraft requirements.
An obstacle for efficient collaboration originates in the different methods of working. Typically, researchers are theoretically oriented and industrial engineers often apply empirical methods which can lead to practical solutions, even if the theoretical explanations are still missing. Although some existing communication difficulties between the two groups are obviously due to the different interests of the organisations to which they belong, there are other logically explainable reasons, which are very informatively described by McRuer and Graham in a historical...
