Achieved results

This section will disseminate the public contents of the documents developed within ASTIB and will keep on track the progress of the project versus the planned activities.

Executive summaries of documents delivered to JU:

WP
Del. number
Title
Issue Date
2.2.3
O-2.2.3-01
HEALTH MONITORING OF EMAS FOR LANDING GEAR
07/2016
2.3.2
O2.3.2.1-02
EMA ARCHITECTURE FOR LANDING GEAR
04/2016
2.3.2
O2.3.2.1-04
EMA’S AND ECU’S SPECIFICATION
10/2016
2.4
O-2.4-02
REVIEW OF EMA TECHNOLOGICAL ROAD MAP
04/2016
2.4
D-2.4-01

REVIEW OF THE TECHNOLOGY ROAD MAP FOR EMA
HEALTH MONITORING

04/2016
2.4
O-2.4-03

FEATURES IDENTIFICATION FOR EMAS HEALTH
MONITORING – A TECHNICAL APPROACH

06/2016
3.4
O.3.4.1-03

FINALISATION OF IRON BIRD GOALS
AND TYPOLOGY OF TESTING

05/2016
3.4
O.3.4.2-01

INITIAL REPORT ON FMSC REQUIREMENTS
AND INTERFACES FOR DATA EXCHANGE

06/2016
3.4
O.3.4.2-04

IRON BIRD ARCHITECTURE
AND REQUIREMENTS DEFINITION

11/2016
3.4
O.3.4.2-05
REPORT ON PHYSICAL CONSTRAINTS AND INTERFACES
11/2016
3.4
D3.4.2-01

IRON BIRD ELECTRICAL & MECHANICAL
PRELIMINARY DESIGN REVIEW

10/2016
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REVIEW OF EMA TECHNOLOGICAL ROAD MAP

Executive Summary

Electrical actuation is a technological area that has been widely addressed in the past years, and technological progresses in electromechanical actuators (EMA) for flight control surfaces have been pursued in several research programmes. EMAs offer several potential advantages over conventional hydraulic actuators, such as improved reliability and maintainability, possibility of energy optimisation and lower system complexity. But compared to hydraulic actuators or EHAs, technological barriers still persist for a wide adoption of EMAs, because of issues associated to envelope constraints created by the adoption of thin wings, sensitivity to certain single point of failures that can lead to mechanical jams, and require thermal management.

ASTIB activities will follow a technology roadmap aimed at moving ahead in the technological maturity of EMAs for aircraft applications, with specific reference to the flight control and landing gear actuators of a regional aircraft. In particular, the technology roadmap will address:

  • Developing new actuators architectures with reduced number of components
  • Developing robust control laws
  • Optimizing the management of regeneration energy
  • Introducing new materials and manufacturing processes
  • Demonstrate the feasibility of electrically actuated landing gears
  • Developing prognostics and health monitoring techniques able to detect degradations, predict their evolutions and estimate when, under continuing usage, they will evolve into failures
  • Exploring new control strategies for the electromechanical actuators allowing to optimize the dynamic response and the energy consumption and to minimize the disturbances following a failure
  • Developing high-fidelity, physics based, models and real-time models of the electromechanical actuators enabling the execution of hardware-in-the-loop and software-in-the-loop tests, therefore allowing assessment of the flight control system behaviour over the entire flight envelope of the aircraft under normal and simulated fault conditions
  • Take advantage of the development of an innovative hybrid iron bird (half real, half simulated) allowing to conduct fully comprehensive testing of the flight control actuators and of the electrically actuated landing gear, inclusive the virtual injection of faults, such to enable to assess the merits of a dedicated health monitoring system
×

REVIEW OF THE TECHNOLOGY ROAD MAP FOR EMA HEALTH MONITORING

Executive Summary

Electrical actuation is a technological area that has been widely addressed in the past years, and technological progresses in electromechanical actuators (EMA) for flight control surfaces have been pursued in several research programmes. EMAs offer several potential advantages over conventional hydraulic actuators, such as improved reliability and maintainability, possibility of energy optimisation and lower system complexity. But compared to hydraulic actuators or EHAs, technological barriers still persist for a wide adoption of EMAs, because of issues associated to envelope constraints created by the adoption of thin wings, sensitivity to certain single point of failures that can lead to mechanical jams, and require thermal management.

In order to overcome these reliability limits, ASTIB activities will be aimed at designing, implementing and validating a comprehensive PHM system. In particular, the technology roadmap for Health Monitoring will address:

  • Study of the fault-to-failure mechanism for several components
  • Extract and evaluate the best Condition Indexes for each addressed fault mode
  • Define a reliable diagnostics logic able to successfully provide early anomaly detection, isolation and identification for each major fault modes affecting the system
  • Define reliable prognostic algorithms, possibly based on Particle Filtering techniques
  • Provide algorithm to perform control reconfiguration depending on the output coming from the PHM system
  • Evaluate and validate the performance of each step of the technology roadmap through simulation, dedicated test rig and on-line implementation on the iron bird
  • Exploring new control strategies for the electromechanical actuators allowing to optimize the dynamic response and the energy consumption and to minimize the disturbances following a failure
  • Developing high-fidelity, physics based, models and real-time models of the electromechanical actuators enabling the execution of hardware-in-the-loop and software-in-the-loop tests, therefore allowing assessment of the flight control system behaviour over the entire flight envelope of the aircraft under normal and simulated fault conditions
  • Take advantage of the development of an innovative hybrid iron bird (half real, half simulated) allowing to conduct fully comprehensive testing of the flight control actuators and of the electrically actuated landing gear, inclusive the virtual injection of faults, such to enable to assess the merits of a dedicated health monitoring system
×

FEATURES IDENTIFICATION FOR EMAS HEALTH MONITORING – A TECHNICAL APPROACH

Executive Summary

The first significant step required to design an efficient and reliable PHM system is to select the type, number and placement of the sensors which signals carry the hidden health condition indexes for the studied components.

In order to perform this choice, a deep knowledge of the physics ruling the system degradation processes is needed.

This document deals with this issues by briefly describing the most significant failure modes for electro-mechanical technology.

On this basis, the signals (possibly) available in the system are discussed and classified based on their origin (EMA, aircraft), sensor primary function (control, health monitoring) and nature (real or virtual).

The possibilities offered by two possible data-collecting approaches, in-flight and pre/post-flight custom checks, have been discussed and compared.

Data processing architecture is hence investigated; the possibility to (partially) elaborate data at EMA and aircraft level have been explored, while the tasks ascribed to the PHM computer have been detailed.

Finally, off-board PHM operations for vehicle-centered and fleet-centered prognostics have been described.

×

HEALTH MONITORING OF EMAS FOR LANDING GEAR

Executive Summary

The study of a PHM framework for the Landing Gear system is of significant interest both for safety and maintenance reasons since a failure in the driving actuators may cause either the insurgence of critical danger conditions for the aircraft users or the necessity to suddenly delay/cancel a mission with the related economical and image damage for the airline.

This document explores the early stages of this study; at first a general look at the actuation system configuration is provided, with particular attention to the EMAs control system.

Hence a brief overview of the sensors (and the related signals) available in the system is presented and the possible addition of dedicated sensors is discussed.

Finally a short technical discussion involving data collection and the algorithms that may be considered for the PHM framework is presented and a validation plan for the HM system is proposed.

×

FINALISATION OF IRON BIRD GOALS AND TYPOLOGY OF TESTING

Executive Summary

The iron bird (IB) will offer the possibility of performing fully comprehensive tests on the EMAs and on the electrically actuated landing gear. In addition to the tests that are normally performed on iron birds, technological advancements offered by the iron bird built in the ASTIB program will be:

  • Featuring a virtual semi-wing offering the possibility of simulating differences between right and left flight control actuators, non-symmetrical flight conditions, of introducing in the simulated semi-wing normal or abnormal disturbances and errors for the flight control actuators in order to allow a fully comprehensive verification of the behavior of the entire system.
  • Implementing the prognostics and health management functions that will be developed for the EMAs
  • Allowing injection of simulated degradations and their progression to verify the merits of the PHM algorithms for the EMAs

This document aims at describing the Iron Bird facility and the tests that it should allow us to perform. The first paragraphs emphasize on the IB’s objectives and description. The last two paragraphs details the different tests it can be expect from such a facility

×

INITIAL REPORT ON FMSC REQUIREMENTS AND INTERFACES FOR DATA EXCHANGE

Executive Summary

This document, as Output O3.4-04 of the Clean Sky 2 - Regional Innovative Aircraft Development Platform Project, is issued as stated in the Agreement, CS2 –REG-GAM-2014-2015-01.

The objective of this document is to define the preliminary characteristics, configuration and functions of a Flight Mechanics Simulation Computer (FMSC) that will accept inputs from the iron bird central control unit, transmit simulated flight data to the Flight Control Computer. This work is included in the WP3.4.-01, which is addressed to the design and coordination of activities for development and build up of an innovative Ground Demonstrator (“Iron Bird”). The Iron Bird shall allow the achievement of the technologies TRL5/6.

×

IRON BIRD ARCHITECTURE AND REQUIREMENTS DEFINITION

Executive Summary

The aim of this document is to provide the Iron Bird top level requirements including physical characteristics of the airframe structure and of the flight control surfaces to be reproduced.

×

REPORT ON PHYSICAL CONSTRAINTS AND INTERFACES

Executive Summary

The aim of this document is to provide the report of the physical constraints for the iron bird (where it will be installed, available space, floor characteristics, etc.)

×

IRON BIRD ELECTRICAL & MECHANICAL PRELIMINARY DESIGN REVIEW REPORT

Executive Summary

In accordance with the results of the "Iron Bird Electrical and Mechanical Preliminary Design Review (EMPR)” held on October the 20th & 21st, 2016 in Pomigliano d’Arco (NA)-Italy, the aim of this document is to provide the report on the the Iron Bird project design status, with reference to the technical roadmap defined in the relevant CS2-REG-IADP_GAM-2016- 2017_Annex1_A0.3v2_2016-07-12.

In particular focused on the mechanical/electrical architecture and on its main components, equipment electrical characteristics, interfaces and physical characteristics, the interfaces of the airframe structure and of the flight control surfaces to be reproduced and integrated.

×

EMA ARCHITECTURE FOR LANDING GEAR

Executive Summary

The document presents the state-of-art and defines the key technologies to be addressed to enable a more extensive use of electro-mechanical actuators (EMAs) for aircraft flight landing gears.

×

EMA’S AND ECU’S SPECIFICATION

Executive Summary

The document presents the development and qualification requirements of the electro-mechanical actuators (EMAs) and relevant electronic control unit (ECUs) for aircraft flight landing gears.