Modeling of reliability and performance assessment of a dissimilar redundancy actuation system with failure monitoring

Actuation system is a vital system in an aircraft, providing the force necessary to move flight control surfaces. The system has a significant influence on the overall aircraft performance and its safety. In order to further increase already high reliability and safety, Airbus has imple- mented a dissimilar redundancy actuation system （DRAS） in its aircraft. The DRAS consists of a hydraulic actuation system （HAS） and an electro-hydrostatic actuation system （EHAS）, in which the HAS utilizes a hydraulic source （HS） to move the control surface and the EHAS utilizes an elec- trical supply （ES） to provide the motion force. This paper focuses on the performance degradation processes and fault monitoring strategies of the DRAS, establishes its reliability model based on the generalized stochastic Petri nets （GSPN）, and carries out a reliability assessment considering the fault monitoring coverage rate and the false alarm rate. The results indicate that the proposed reli- ability model of the DRAS, considering the fault and redundancy degradation process and identify monitoring, can express its fault logical relation potential safety hazards.

Harvesting Mechanical Work From Folding-Based Protein Engines: From Single-Molecule Mechanochemical Cycles to Macroscopic Devices

Mechanochemical coupling cycles underlie the work-generation mechanisms of biological systems and are realized by highly regulated conformational changes of the protein machineries.However,it has been challenging to utilize protein conformational changes to do mechanical work at the macroscopic level in biomaterials,and it remains elusive to con-struct macroscopic mechanochemical devices based on molecular-level mechanochemical coupling sys-tems.Here,the authors demonstrate that protein folding can be utilized to realize protein’s mechano-chemical cycles at both single-molecule and macro-scopic levels.