Design Considerations of Fault-Tolerant Electromechanical Actuator Systems for More Electric Aircraft (MEA)

Zhu, Shaohong; Cox, Tom; Xu, Zeyuan; Gerada, Chris; Li, Chen

Abstract

This paper studies the concerns such as architecture and reliability in the deployment of electromechanical actuator (EMA) in the actuation system for more electric aircraft (MEA). First, the reliability of the actuation system architecture such as control surface redundancy and actuator redundancy will be studied to determine an appropriate actuator architecture, with or without considering jamming. Then, the considerations for fault-tolerance and redundancy of the prime electric motor will be discussed in terms of reliability, weight, control complexity, and cost based on a direct-drive EMA designed for MEA. The comparison results demonstrate the configuration of two anti-jamming EMAs with dual three-phase drives connected in parallel can meet the requirements of the safety-critical actuation applications, promoting the deployment of fully electric actuation system on the MEA. Finally, a fault-tolerant motor with double 3-phase system designed for EMA will be presented, with performance under normal and fault conditions validated.

Citation

Zhu, S., Cox, T., Xu, Z., Gerada, C., & Li, C. (2018, September). Design Considerations of Fault-Tolerant Electromechanical Actuator Systems for More Electric Aircraft (MEA). Presented at IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition ( ECCE 2018), Portland, OR

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition ( ECCE 2018)
• Start Date: Sep 23, 2018
• End Date: Sep 27, 2018
• Acceptance Date: Apr 30, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Dec 6, 2018
• Publication Date: Dec 3, 2018
• Deposit Date: Mar 12, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 15, 2019
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Pages: 4607-4613
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ECCE.2018.8557426
• Keywords: Electromechanical actuator (EMA); Failure probability; Fault-tolerant; Jamming; More electric aircraft (MEA)
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1630927
• Publisher URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8557426
• Additional Information: © 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
• Contract Date: Mar 12, 2019