Methodology To Identify The Failure Mode Test Scenarios For The Validation Of Complex Fly-By-Wire Flight Control Systems

This paper provides a methodology to identify failure mode test scenarios to validate the response of highly complex and flight critical systems. With highly complex systems, the explicit validation testing of every possible system failure and combinations of system failures quickly becomes impractical simply due to the extraordinarily high number of possible failure combinations. The methodology described in this paper takes advantage of other commonly generated system design artifacts to focus the failure mode validation effort to develop a correct, complete and defendable identification of failure mode conditions to validate. The paper is written specific to the example of a Helicopter Fly-by-Wire design, but the enclosed methodology can be easily applied to other highly complex and critical aircraft systems.