Software Development Of An Aircraft Actuator Control System

In recent years, with the continuous development of science, technology andeconomy, a variety of aircraft continue to be used in many areas of the national economyand the people’s livelihood, such as national defense and military, agricultural production,disaster relief, exploration of Surveying and Mapping, monitoring and control, etc. Theaircraft technology has also achieved great development, many domestic agencies andschools who launch researches about aircraft-related hardware and software technology,have made some achievements and breakthroughs.Aircraft flight control system based on the embedded real-time operating system is anew technology got developed in recent decades, compared with the big main cycle andinterrupt pattern of traditional embedded systems, the new technology on one handguarantees high real-time response characteristics, on the other hand replaces thetraditional interrupt pattern with multi-tasking, thus the system structure is simplified;the embedded operating system’s task management function is more powerful andSystematic, developers can focus on the design and development of the system functions,so we can develop a more powerful and complex flight control system. With the UnitedStates took the lead in applying embedded operating system to advanced fighters andspacecraft embedded computers, the flight control system developed in this manner isbecoming increasingly common and mature, especially in the embedded systems ofguided weapons, unmanned aircrafts and spacecraft.In this paper, we discussed the actuator control system as a component of flightcontrol system as entry point, from structured analysis of the system function andstructured design of the system tasks, to the development of the system’s multi-task, aswell as the testing of the system, embedded real-time operating system based softwaredevelopment were discussed in detail.The first part of the article includes the first and the second chapter. Firstly, we talkedabout the research background, significance and research status of the aircraft actuatorcontrol system and flight control system; then we proceed from aircraft actuator controlsystem alone, introduce the hardware and software environment and related technologiesof the system, so that readers have a general understanding of the system developmentand hardware and software platform; finally, we arranged the content and organization ofthe paper structure. The third chapter is the second part of the article. It’s about Analysis and design ofthe aircraft actuator control system. Firstly, by using the Hatley-Pirbhai methods, areal-time system structured analysis method, we undertake structural analysis of theactuator control system, develop system’s environment maps and data flow/control flowdiagrams. The environment map defines the interfaces between system and externalenvironment, and data flow/control flow diagrams define the function of the system. Indata flow/control flow graphs, the system is divided into actuator control and actuatorself-test two main functional modules, these flow diagrams establish clear description andconstraints of the system function with further decompositions and clear explanations ofthe system. Based on structured analysis, we introduced the multi-task synchronizationand mutual-exclusion mechanisms, the interaction of task data (information hidingmodule), task classification principles and the cohesive principles of basic processes; basedon these characteristics, mechanisms and principles, combined with the basic processesgiven by the data flow/control flow diagrams, eventually we achieved the task partition ofthe system.The fourth chapter is the third part of the article. Actuator control system involves thesystem I/O tasks, I/O processing tasks, self-test task and system log tasks. This part of thepaper mainly describes different functions of these tasks, the input and output of thesetasks, the processing flow of these tasks as well as the key technologies in the processingof these tasks.The fifth chapter is the last part of the article. In this part, we design the test plan ofthe software, we performed serial interface communication test, analog input and outputtest and load test, totally9tests of3categories. According to the test results, weevaluated the functionality and stability of the system.