Washington, Nov 17: A University in Netherlands has developed new control techniques that would be able to reduce the risk of aircraft crashes.

The new techniques were developed as a result of a research project undertaken by the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) into Fault Tolerant Control.

The new set of techniques, which would be demonstrated to the general public on November 21, would involve keeping damaged aircraft in the air for longer and enabling continuing flight control. The key to this is to improve control techniques which enable the aircraft to continue to be controlled.

The implemented improvements are based on the analysis of flight data from aviation accidents by the NLR (National Aerospace Laboratory) and have led to an improved interpretation of the defective condition of the aircraft.

The new improvements can largely be attributed to the greater calculation capacity of computers and further progress in the underlying mathematical theory of the past few years.

The demonstration would also involve a number of realistic accident scenarios, which will be taken as examples.

For example, the El Al flight which crashed in the Bijlmer area of Amsterdam in 1992, would be reconstructed using TU Delft's Simona flight simulator.

The change this time round will be the use of the newly-developed control techniques in this simulator.

Recent simulator experiments have shown that the new techniques make it easier for the pilot to land seriously-damaged aircraft safely.

According to TU Delft, both military and civil aviation parties are displaying great interest in these developments.

The new techniques are only expected to be introduced in practice in the long term. (ANI)