Test Facility for Electro-Mechanical Actuation Systems

Abstract

Electro-mechanical actuators (EMAs) in flight control of large civil aircraft are a key enabler for more or all electric aircraft. However, to meet demanding safety and lifetime requirements new monitoring and control techniques need to be developed and tested. A new facility is presented in this paper that allows fast validation of new algorithms and technology in a representative lab environment. A linear research EMA was developed from commercial of-the-shelf components that can be integrated in an aileron test rig for parallel-redundant actuation. On the one hand the design is based on typical performance requirements. On the other hand the high degree of modularity of the test rig and the actuator itself allows for easy adjustments of key parameters and components.