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.