About the project

Objectives

ASTIB is specifically focused on contributing to generate technological advancements to be implemented in a future Green Regional Aircraft (GRA); its main objectives are to support the improvement of the Technological Readiness Level up to above TRL 5 for a number of significant electrical equipment that are being considered of critical importance for the future GRA. This will help supporting industrial application decisions for future deployments of GRA.

In particular, ASTIB will develop:

Electromechanical actuators (EMAs) with their associated electronic control units (ECUs) for selected flight control surfaces
Electrically actuated one main and one nose landing gears
Reliable prognostics and health management functions for the electromechanical actuators
An advanced multi-functional integration, verification and validation test rig ("Iron Bird")
Contribution to the development of a health monitoring validation platform
Tools for evaluation of the benefits of an integrated health monitoring platform

ASTIB detailed objectives

>> Developing new actuators architectures with reduced number of components and new design suitable for envelope reduction with respect to present technology

>> Developing robust control laws

>> Introducing new materials

>> Demonstrating the feasibility of electrically actuated landing gears

>> Enabling the all-electric architecture at aircraft level

>> 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 optimise the dynamic response and to minimise 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 behavior over the entire flight envelope of the aircraft under normal and simulated fault conditions

>> Allow testing of new flight control system architectures aimed at wing load alleviation / load control

>> Accept the installation and allow testing of the electrical power distribution system and the associated electrical loads

>> Reproduce the aircraft installation and allow testing of the electrical landing gear system and their associated load control system

>> Reproduce the aircraft installation of a few selected flight control surfaces with their electromechanical actuators, with provisions for future installation of other flight control system equipment

>> Install programmable load banks simulating aircraft electrical loads in order to complete the global aircraft electrical system simulation

>> Simulation of the aircraft flight mechanics

>> Simulation of the sensors

>> Real-time computation of the aerodynamic loads

>> Simplified aeroelastic model of the aircraft

>> Interfacing with the flight control computer

>> Generation of aerodynamic loads acting on the flight control surfaces and on the landing gears that require to be loaded for assessing the components behaviour in a relevant environment

>> Mathematical models of the flight control actuators; the models will interface with the Flight Control Computer (FCC) and allow test on the Iron Bird in a virtual complete architecture

>> Virtual wing computer that will simulate in real time the same actual equipment installed on the iron bird

4) Enable faults simulation in the components under test

5) Support the testing activities

6) Provide a platform suitable for future installation of other components of the flight control system

1) Contribute to the Clean Sky 2 WP0 (Management), participating to Regional Aircraft IADP Steering Committee and Consortium Management Committee

2) Participate to the Management Committee of R-IADP Clean Sky 2 WP2 (Technologies Development) and WP3 (Demonstrations)

3) Contribute to the technological and demonstration activities of R-IADP Clean Sky 2 WP 2.3.4.2 (Enhanced Electrical Power Distribution & Load Management), WP 2.2 (Regional Avionics), WP 2.4 (Innovative FCS), WP 3.3 (Flight simulator), WP 3.4 (Iron Bird)