Review on signal-by-wire and power-by-wire actuation for more electric aircraft

The huge and rapid progress in electric drives offers new opportunities to improve the performances of aircraft at all levels：fuel burn,environmental footprint,safety,integration and production,serviceability,and maintainability.Actuation for safety-critical applications like flight-controls,landing gears,and even engines is one of the major consumers of non-propulsive power.Conventional actuation with centralized hydraulic power generation and distribution and control of power by throttling has been well established for decades,but offers a limited potential of evolution.In this context,electric drives become more and more attractive to remove the natural drawbacks of conventional actuation and to offer new opportunities for improving performance.This paper takes the stock,at both the signal and power levels,of the evolution of actuation for safety-critical applications in aerospace.It focuses on the recent advances and the remaining challenges to be taken toward full electrical actuation for commercial and military aircraft,helicopters,and launchers.It logically starts by emphasizing the specificity of safety-critical actuation for aerospace.The following section addresses in details the evolution of aerospace actuation from mechanically-signaled and hydraulically-supplied to all electric,with special emphasis on research and development programs and on solutions entered into service.Finally,the last section reviews the challenges to be taken to generalize the use of all-electric actuators for future aircraft programs.

Research on Dual-Variable Integrated Electro-Hydrostatic Actuator

The integrated electro-hydrostatic actuator （EHA） with variable displacement and variable rotation speed is researched. In the system, the output of the actuator is changed by controlling the rotationspeed of the brushless DC servomotor and the displacement of the servopump. The mathematical model described in state-space model is created. The system characteristics are studied based on the point of multiplicative dual-variable. And the basic method of control of the system is presented.

Modelling and simulation of flight control electromechanical actuators with special focus on model architecting, multidisciplinary effects and power flows

In the aerospace field, electromechanical actuators are increasingly being implemented in place of conventional hydraulic actuators. For safety-critical embedded actuation applications like flight controls, the use of electromechanical actuators introduces specific issues related to thermal balance, reflected inertia, parasitic motion due to compliance and response to failure. Unfortunately, the physical effects governing the actuator behaviour are multidisciplinary, coupled and nonlinear. Although numerous multi-domain and system-level simulation packages are now available on the market, these effects are rarely addressed as a whole because of a lack of scientific approaches for model architecting, multi-purpose incremental modelling and judicious model implementation. In this publication, virtual prototyping of electromechanical actuators is addressed using the Bond-Graph formalism. New approaches are proposed to enable incremental modelling,thermal balance analysis, response to free-run or jamming faults, impact of compliance on parasitic motion, and influence of temperature. A special focus is placed on friction and compliance of the mechanical transmission with fault injection and temperature dependence. Aileron actuation is used to highlight the proposals for control design, energy consumption and thermal analysis, power network pollution analysis and fault response.

Architecture Optimization of More Electric Aircraft Actuation System

The optional types of power source and actuator in the aircraft are more and more diverse due to fast development in more electric technology, which makes the combinations of different power sources and actuators become extremely complex in the architecture optimization process of airborne actuation system. The traditional ＂trial and error＂ method cannot satisfy the design demands. In this paper, firstly, the composition of more electric aircraft （MEA） flight control actuation system （FCAS） is introduced, and the possible architecture quantity is calculated. Secondly, the evaluation criteria of FCAS architecture with respect to safe reliability, weight and efficiency are proposed, and the evaluation criteria values are calculated in the case that each control surface adopts the same actuator configuration. Finally, the optimization results of MEA FCAS architecture are obtained by applying genetic algorithm （GA）. Compared to the traditional actuation system architecture, which only adopts servo valve controlled hydraulic actuators, the weight of the optimized more electric actuation system architecture can be reduced by 6%, and the efficiency can be improved by 30% based on the safe reliability requirements.

Multi-level virtual prototyping of electromechanical actuation system for more electric aircraft

Electromechanical actuators（EMAs） are becoming increasingly attractive in the field of more electric aircraft because of their outstanding benefits, which include reduced fuel burn and maintenance cost, enhanced system flexibility, and improved management of fault detection and isolation. However, electromechanical actuation raises specific issues when being used for safetycritical aerospace applications like flight controls： huge reflected inertia to load, jamming-type failure, and increase of backlash with service due to wear and local dissipation of heat losses for thermal balance. This study proposes an incremental approach for virtual prototyping of EMAs. It is driven by a model-based system engineering process in order to enable simulation-aided design.Best practices supported by Bond graph formalism are suggested to develop a model＇s structure efficiently and to make the model ready for use（or extension） by addressing the above mentioned issues. Physical effects are progressively introduced, and the realism of lumped-parameter models is increased step-by-step. In particular, multi-level component models are architected to ensure continuity between engineering activities. The models are implemented in the AMESim simulation environment, and simulation responses are given to illustrate how they can be used for preliminary sizing, control design, thermal balance verification, and faults to failure analysis. The proposed best practices intend to provide engineers with fast, reusable, and efficient means to assess performance virtually and enhance maturity, performance, and robustness.