Redundancy of hydraulic flight control actuators

The constraint of requiring airplanes to have inherent aerodynamic stability can be removed by using active control systems. The resulting airplane requires control system reliability approaching that of the basic airframe. Redundant control actuators can be used to achieve the required reliability, but create mechanization and operational problems. Of numerous candidate systems, two different approaches to solving the problems associated with redundant actuators which appear the most likely to be used in advanced airplane control systems are described.