CAREFREE MANOEUVRING AND AUTOMATIC RETURN TO NORMAL FLIGHT ENVELOPE JAS 39 GRIPEN.

The JAS 39 Gripen is a light weight multirole combat fighter. It has delta canard configuration with all moving canards. It has negative inherent stability in the longitudinal axes for improved performance. It has a full time three channel digital fly by wire Flight Control System (FCS).The FCS uses angle of attack, pitch rate and normal acceleration to stabilize the aerodynamically unstable aircraft in the longitudinal axes.To provide the pilot with maximum aircraft performance in every situation, without extra attention to air intake/engine envelope limits, structural overloading or departure situations, the JAS 39 Gripen has inbuilt flight control system limit functions such as angle of attack-, normal load factor-, sideslip- and roll rate limit functions, which will make the JAS 39 Gripen carefree to manoeuvre.If the pilot by mistake ends up in a low speed situation with a high aircraft nose attitude and high angle of attack, the JAS 39 Gripen FCS will automatically return the aircraft from high attitude angles, high angle of attack back to the normal angle of attack flight envelope.In order to demonstrate the JAS 39 Gripen carefree and automatic return to normal flight envelope capabilities with all types of external store configurations, extensive simulations and flight test programs have been performed, divided in a phase using an aircraft with an anti stall chute mounted and a final verification flight test phase with a production aircraft from the Swedish Air Force.Furthermore a wake vortex detection and wake vortex transient reduction flight control system has been developed and flight tested.