Fault-tolerant transputer-based controller configurations for gas-turbine engines

Investigates the potential of parallel processing, and one device, in particular, the Inmos transputer, in the design of a fault-tolerant high-integrity computer module for gas-turbine engine control. While three-lane voting systems are commonly favoured in avionics systems, owing to hardware implementation constraints, gas-turbine engine controllers are generally realised as two-lane systems. Transputer system configurations are devised in an attempt to overcome this constraint. In particular, an ´overlapping triad´ topology is investigated in detail, and both strengths and weaknesses of the present transputer architecture are revealed.