Collins to overhaul helicopter avionics flight-control computers with high-performance processors
Questions and answers:
- What is the main purpose of the $9.2 million contract announced by the Army Contracting Command? For Collins Aerospace Hamilton Sundstrand to overhaul and maintain the flight-control computers for the U.S. Army's UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters.
- What is the role of the flight-control computers in the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters? They manage inputs from the pilot’s controls and sensors to command actuators that move the helicopter's main and tail rotors to enhance stability and performance through the fly-by-wire automatic flight-control system.
- How do flight-control computers improve the UH-60 Black Hawk's flight capabilities? They integrate stabilizing functions like flight path stabilization and stabilator adjustments to offer redundancy and fault tolerance for continued flight, even in the event of partial system failure.
REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. – U.S. Army helicopter avionics experts are asking the Collins Aerospace Hamilton Sundstrand segment in Windsor Locks, Conn., to overhaul and maintain flight-control computers for the Army's UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters.
Officials of the Army Contracting Command at Redstone Arsenal, Ala., announced a $9.2 million contract to Collins Aerospace Hamilton Sundstrand in September for the maintenance and overhaul of flight-control computers for the UH-60 Black Hawk. Collins Aerospace is a subsidiary of RTX Corp.
The company's flight-control computers represent the core of the UH-60's fly-by-wire automatic flight-control system (AFCS), which replaced traditional mechanical linkages with electronic signal control for improved responsiveness and reduced maintenance demands.
Hamilton Sundstrand manufactures and supports the flight-control computers in the UH-60M Black Hawk and later variants. The dual-channel triple-redundant flight-control computers manage inputs from the pilot’s controls and sensors to command actuators that move the helicopter’s main and tail rotors.
Stability augmentation
The system integrates the Black Hawk's stability augmentation system, trim system, flight path stabilization, and flight director, all of which work together to stabilize and assist flight under demanding military conditions.
Each UH-60M has flight-control computers 1 and 2 that perform redundant real-time control, stabilator adjustments, and actuator commands for continued flight even in case of partial system failure.
The flight-control computers are 32-bit systems with high-performance processors capable of about 6 million floating-point operations per second and 24 million instructions per second. Each flight computer has several input-output processors to manage analog, discrete, and digital signals from helicopters sensors and pilot controls.
The UH-60 flight-control computer capitalizes on the VME open-systems architecture; the research flight-control computer in the partial authority flight control augmentation system for the UH-60 is a VME form-factor computer running the VxWorks real-time operating system.
Control software
It hosts the modernized control laws software and interfaces with aircraft control and sensor systems. The VME bus backplane architecture supports modular, expandable computing in the flight-control functions on the UH-60 helicopter.
The flight-control computer architecture is single-threaded, and handles several flight-control functions like advanced multi-mode control laws for low-speed handling and hover, and integrates active cyclic and collective inceptors that provide tactile feedback to the pilot.
The entire system replaces older mechanical controls with fly-by-wire technology that provides continuous fault monitoring, majority voting on control signals, and fault message processing to maintain control and handling.
On this contract Collins Aerospace Hamilton Sundstrand will do the work at locations to be determined with each order, and should be finished by September 2030. For more information contact Collins Aerospace Hamilton Sundstrand online at www.collinsaerospace.com, or the Army Contracting Command-Redstone at https://acc.army.mil/contractingcenters/acc-rsa/.