F-14 Aircraft and Propulsion Control Integration Evaluation

Since 1976, the U.S. Navy in conjunction with Pratt and Whitney Aircraft (PWA) has been actively engaged in developing the technology base for on engine, dual redundant, fault tolerant, full authority digital electronic control (FADEC) systems with the capability of aircraft control integration for application to the next generation Navy aircraft. Navy contracts were awarded in 1981 to PWA and Grumman Aerospace Corporation (GAC) to identify the operational benefits of the F-14 Aircraft with a dual-redundant FADEC interfaced to an Advanced Fuel Management Systems (AFM) and integrated with the F-14 aircraft control system. This paper presents the FADEC/F-14 integration evaluation performed by PWA and discusses the benefits of the FADEC/F-14 integrated system. These include improvements in reliability, mission abort, survivability, maintainability, cruise fuel consumption, engine weight, diagnostics and fault recording, inlet and engine air flow matching and propulsion control accuracy.