Virtual Prototyping of Position Synchronized Electro-mechanical Actuators Driving Independent Loads for More Electric Aircraft Flight Control Actuation System Application
Résumé
In the field of more electric aircraft, electromechanical actuators (EMAs) are becoming more and more attractive because of their outstanding benefits of aircraft fuel reduction, maintenance costs saving, and system flexibility improvement. For aerospace electromechanical actuator applications, the proposed communication addresses the combination of extensive use of EMAs and electrical synchronization. Two EMAs drive two independent loads which positions are to be synchronized at any time. Due to the different natural dynamics and external loads, the two independent driven loads tend to get a different position, which is not acceptable. Even in case one actuator failure, priority is given to synchronization instead of following the position setpoint. Therefore, virtual prototype of the EMAs actuation system is proposed to assess and pre-validate the synchronization concepts with resort to a model-based approach. Firstly, a linear virtual prototype is proposed to preliminary study the position synchronization strategy. Then a full model is proposed with the consideration of more cross-linked physical effects and it can be adapted to the different engineering needs to make simulation as realistic as possible.