Patent GB-964595-A (GB)
Title: Aircraft landing system
IPC: G01S1/02
Filed: 1961-05-08
Abstract: 964,595. Controlling aircraft; aircraft instruments. NORTH AMERICAN AVIATION Inc. May 8, 1961 [June 10, 1960], No. 16579/61. Headings B7G and B7W. An aircraft landing system comprises means responsive to measured altitude and altitude rate for computing the acceleration require to achieve a selected altitude and altitude rate at a predetermined time, and means responsive to the computed acceleration and measured altitude rate for deriving a landing control signal. In the embodiment described, the selected altitude is zero and the selected altitude rate may be minus two feet per second, the signal being used to effect automatic landing by operating control surfaces. Alternatively, the signal may be displayed, so that the pilot can land blind by controlling the aircraft so as to keep the displayed signal zero. In the Figure, a radar altimeter 15 and a vertical velocity measuring unit 17 are mounted on a roll and yaw stabilized platform (not shown), the unit 17 being an acceleration integrator monitored by a rate signal from altimeter 15 as in Fig. 5 (not shown). The landing control signal is an altitude rate error signal he available from a comparator 19, and the computer comprises five time function generators 49, 50, 51, 21 and 53, which are suitably contoured potentiometers driven by a constant speed motor 45 energized from a power source 43 when switch 40 is closed. The computer is energized by closure of switches 40 and 41 manually or automatically at, say, twenty seconds before touchdown, and the object is to attain the selected altitude and altitude rate at the end of the twenty second period. A summing device 55 has one input from the altitude rate device 17, a second input from a touchdown altitude rate selector 57, and a third input representing the predicted effect of any existing he signal, obtained by energizing potentiometer 53 by the he signal. The output of summing device 55, the predicted altitude rate error at the end of the twenty second period, or hp, energizes potentiometer 21, which modifies hp in accordance with the amount of the twenty second period which is left at any instant, to obtain hch, the predicted vertical acceleration required to attain the preselected altitude rate at the end of the twenty second period. A further summing device 60 has an input from the altimeter 15, and from potentiometer 49 energized by the altitude rate device 17, and has an output hp representing the predicted altitude error at the end of the twenty second period. The effects of the control action consequent on an he signal are taken into account in the prediction by two further inputs, one from potentiometer 50 energized by the he signal, and one from potentiometer 51 energized by the hch signal. The output of device 60 is sealed in an amplifier 27, the sealing being such that abrupt control actions are avoided, without sealing down the signal to an ineffective value, and the amplifier output is taken as indicative of the acceleration required to bring the predicted altitude at the end of the twenty second period to zero. The two acceleration signals are added in a device 30, and the sum integrated by an electromechanical servo 31, to produce an altitude rate demand signal hc. This is fed to a device 19 together with the h signal, and the difference, he is fed to an autopilot 35 operating control surfaces 37, so that the system operates continuously to reduce he towards zero. While the system is inoperative. the he signal is fed through switch 41 as a negative feed-back signal to integrator 31 through summing device 30, so that the initial value of the integrand is zero. The system operates so that the he control signal will cause the selected altitude rate to be attained at the end of the twenty second period, the signal being constantly modified when the predicted altitude at the end of the period differs from the selected altitude, so that the selected altitude is also attained. Any disturbance, due for example to gusts, results in altered measured values of altitude and altitude rate whereby a new final approach path is computed to achieve touchdown at the end of the original twenty second period.