Book Description
System controllers must be fail-safe, low cost, flexible to software changes, able to output health and status words, and permit rapid retest qualification. The system controller designed and tested for the aerospike engine program was an attempt to meet these requirements. This paper describes the aerospike controller design, the automated simulation testing techniques, and the real time monitoring data visualization structure. Controller cost was minimized by design of a single-string system that used an off-the-shelf 486 central processing unit. A linked-list architecture, with states defined in a user-friendly state table, accomplished software changes to the controller. Proven to be fail-safe, this system reported the abort cause and automatically reverted to a safe condition for any first failure.