Multi-level virtual prototyping of electromechanical actuation system for more electric aircraft

Electromechanical actuators (EMAs) are becoming increasingly attractive in the field of more electric aircraft because of their outstanding benefits, which include reduced fuel burn and maintenance cost, enhanced system flexibility, and improved management of fault detection and isolation. However, electromechanical actuation raises specific issues when being used for safety-critical aerospace applications like flight controls: huge reflected inertia to load, jamming-type failure, and increase of backlash with service due to wear and local dissipation of heat losses for thermal balance. This study proposes an incremental approach for virtual prototyping of EMAs. It is driven by a model-based system engineering process in order to enable simulation-aided design. Best practices supported by Bond graph formalism are suggested to develop a model’s structure efficiently and to make the model ready for use (or extension) by addressing the above mentioned issues. Physical effects are progressively introduced, and the realism of lumped-parameter models is increased step-by-step. In particular, multi-level component models are architected to ensure continuity between engineering activities. The models are implemented in the AMESim simulation environment, and simulation responses are given to illustrate how they can be used for preliminary sizing, control design, thermal balance verification, and faults to failure analysis. The proposed best practices intend to provide engineers with fast, reusable, and efficient means to assess performance virtually and enhance maturity, performance, and robustness.     

基于负刚度预载荷机构的锥形介电型EAP驱动器研究

为了便于对介电型EAP驱动器进行优化设计,针对介电型EAP驱动器进行建模是极其重要的.结合弹性大变形理论及Maxwell应力建立介电型EAP材料的机电耦合模型,分析一种可以提高驱动器性能的负刚度预载荷机构,在此基础上建立基于负刚度预载荷机构的锥形介电型EAP驱动器模型.通过对微分代数方程组的求解,分析预载荷机构对驱动器...     

The All-Electric Fighter Airplane Flight Control Issues, Capabilities, and Projections

The prime issues raised in any all-electric airplane discussion are (1) is the electric power system as reliable and trustworthy as a hydraulic power system; (2) can electromechanical flight control actuators perform satisfactorily, i.e., can the performance match that of hydraulic actuators; (3) can redundant electromechanical actuation systems (EMAS) be designed to equal the flight safety reliability of dual tandem hydraulic actuators; and (4) can satisfactory solutions be found or developed for dissipating the heat generated in actuators and power controllers. The first question should be inconsequential since it is assumed that the all-electric aircraft will be equipped with a fly-by-wire (FBW) flight control system (FCS) which is already dependent upon an uninterrupted supply of electrical power. Design studies and hardware already developed show that the answer to question (2) is that EMAS outperform hydraulic actuators, particularly under load. The answer to question (3) is not as clear primarily because the issue has not been addressed in any depth. As posed the answer must be yes, but with the proviso that the weight might be greater than currently predicted. Studies have shown that we can cope with the heat dissipation issue addressed in question (4) in the case of motors and inverter/power controllers. The projections regarding usage of EMAS and the future of the all-electric airplane must be based on the type of vehicle (small subsonic transport, large transport, or military tighter) and the economics involved.     

Martian jumping rover equipped with electroactive polymer actuators: A preliminary study

This paper presents results of a preliminary study of feasibility for the application of electroactive polymer (EAP) based actuators to a robotic locomotion system, intended by the European Space Agency (ESA) to operate on the surface of Mars. The system is conceived as an elastic spherical rover, exploiting wind propulsion for surface motion, while adopting an active mechanism for vertical jumping over obstacles. The use of polymeric electromechanical devices is envisaged in order to provide actuation to such a jumping mechanism. Among the available EAP technologies, new contractile linear actuators based on dielectric elastomers arc proposed in this study as suitable devices and two potential solutions concerning their use are designed, modeled, and evaluated via numerical simulations. The best solution reveals interesting simulated performances, enabling jumping of obstacle heights corresponding to more than 7% of the diameter of the rover     

Motion synchronization in a dual redundant HA/EHA system by using a hybrid integrated intelligent control design

This paper presents an integrated fuzzy controller design approach to synchronize a dis-similar redundant actuation system of a hydraulic actuator (HA) and an electro-hydrostatic actu-ator (EHA) with system uncertainties and disturbances. The motion synchronous control system consists of a trajectory generator, an individual position controller for each actuator, and a fuzzy force tracking controller (FFTC) for both actuators. The trajectory generator provides the desired motion dynamics and designing parameters of the trajectory which are taken according to the dynamic characteristics of the EHA. The position controller consists of a feed-forward controller and a fuzzy position tracking controller (FPTC) and acts as a decoupled controller, improving posi-tion tracking performance with the help of the feed-forward controller and the FPTC. The FFTC acts as a coupled controller and takes into account the inherent coupling effect. The simulation results show that the proposed controller not only eliminates initial force fighting by synchronizing the two actuators, but also improves disturbance rejection performance.     

FLUTTER SUPPRESSION USING DISTRIBUTED PIEZOELECTRIC ACTUATORS

The Flutter suppression using distributed piezoelectric actuators has been analyzed and tested. In constructing the finite element equation, effects of piezoelectric matrices are investigated. LQG method is used in designing the control law. In reducing the order of the control law, both balance realization and LK methods are used. For the rational approximation of the unsteady aerodynamic forces LS method is improved. In determining the piezoelectric constants d31 a new dynamic response method is developed. Laser vibrameter is used to pick up the model response and in ground resonance test the model is excited by piezoelectric actuators. Reasonable agreement of the wind tunnel flutter suppression test with calculated results is obtained.     

Proportional fuzzy feed-forward architecture control validation by wind tunnel tests of a morphing wing

In aircraft wing design, engineers aim to provide the best possible aerodynamic performance under cruise flight conditions in terms of lift-to-drag ratio. Conventional control sur-faces such as flaps, ailerons, variable wing sweep and spoilers are used to trim the aircraft for other flight conditions. The appearance of the morphing wing concept launched a new challenge in the area of overall wing and aircraft performance improvement during different flight segments by locally altering the flow over the aircraft's wings. This paper describes the development and appli-cation of a control system for an actuation mechanism integrated in a new morphing wing structure. The controlled actuation system includes four similar miniature electromechanical actuators dis-posed in two parallel actuation lines. The experimental model of the morphing wing is based on a full-scale portion of an aircraft wing, which is equipped with an aileron. The upper surface of the wing is a flexible one, being closed to the wing tip; the flexible skin is made of light composite materials. The four actuators are controlled in unison to change the flexible upper surface to improve the flow quality on the upper surface by delaying or advancing the transition point from laminar to turbulent regime. The actuators transform the torque into vertical forces. Their bases are fixed on the wing ribs and their top link arms are attached to supporting plates fixed onto the flex-ible skin with screws. The actuators push or pull the flexible skin using the necessary torque until the desired vertical displacement of each actuator is achieved. The four vertical displacements of the actuators, correlated with the new shape of the wing, are provided by a database obtained through a preliminary aerodynamic optimization for specific flight conditions. The control system is designed to control the positions of the actuators in real time in order to obtain and to maintain the desired shape of the wing for a specified flight condition. The feasibility and effectiveness of the developed control system by use of a proportional fuzzy feed-forward methodology are demon-strated experimentally through bench and wind tunnel tests of the morphing wing model.     

Electromechanical Actuation Technology for the All-Electric Aircraft

Electromechanical actuation is a critical element that must be developed and verified to make the all-electric aircraft a viable concept. For several years the Flight Control Division of the Air Force Wright Aeronautical Laboratories has sponsored activities to demonstrate the credibility of electromechanical actuation systems (EMAS) for primary flight control actuation functions. The foundation for these EMAS activities and several electromechanical actuation development programs are described here. One involves the design, fabrication, and laboratory test of a rotary, hingeline electromechanical actuator. Another involves the development and flight test demonstration of a linear electromechanical actuator for controlling an aileron of a C-141 aircraft. A third involves the design and development of a linear electromechanical actuator for missiles having severe performance, temperature, and volumetric requirements. In addition, a brief summary of the results from two aircraft actuation trade studies compare the baseline (conventional) hydraulic flight control system with an all-electric airplane concept including quantitative comparisons of weight, reliability and maintainability, and life cycle costs.     

Design and performance analysis of position-based impedance control for an electrohydrostatic actuation system

Electrohydrostatic actuator (EHA) is a type of power-by-wire actuator that is widely implemented in the aerospace industry for flight control, landing gears, thrust reversers, thrust vector control, and space robots. This paper presents the development and evaluation of position-based impedance control (PBIC) for an EHA. Impedance control provides the actuator with compliance and facilitates the interaction with the environment. Most impedance control applications utilize electrical or valve-controlled hydraulic actuators, whereas this work realizes impedance control via a compact and efficient EHA. The structures of the EHA and PBIC are firstly introduced. A mathematical model of the actuation system is established, and values of its coefficients are identified by particle swarm optimization. This model facilitates the development of a position controller and the selection of target impedance parameters. A nonlinear proportional-integral position controller is developed for the EHA to achieve the accurate positioning requirement of PBIC. The controller compensates for the adverse effect of stiction, and a position accuracy of 0.08 mm is attained. Various experimental results are presented to verify the applicability of PBIC to the EHA. The compliance of the actuator is demonstrated in an impact test.     

介质阻挡放电等离子体对翼型流动分离控制的实验研究

在低速开口风洞中进行了等离子体激励器对NACA0015翼型流动分离控制的实验研究。采用PIV技术,对翼型绕流流场进行了测量,显示了施加等离子体激励后流场的变化。通过五分量天平对升力和阻力的测量,研究了激励电压和激励频率对翼型流动分离控制的规律。研究表明,低风速下在翼型前缘施加等离子体激励,能够有效地控制翼型流动分离,在来流为20m／s时,最大升力系数增加11％,失速迎角增加6°;在给定的流动状态下,激励电压和激励频率存在一个阈值,不同迎角下该阈值不同,迎角越大,分离越严重,对激励强度的要求也越高。     

不同类型多级等离子体激励器诱导气流的力学特性研究

等离子体激励器通过产生的等离子加速气流,可以实现对流动的控制。单级等离子体激励器由于受到等离子体放电的物理限制,其控制作用较小;为了提高等离子体流动控制的效果,关于多级等离子体激励器的研究得到发展。采用图像采集和粒子示踪测速系统(PIV),对传统多级等离子体激励器和多级双极性等离子体激励器的放电现象以及气流加速进行研究,并通过流场速度分布计算等离子体激励器对空气产生的推力和吸力。结果表明:随着电压的升高,传统多级等离子体激励器产生的推力和吸力会逐渐减弱;而多级双极性等离子体激励器产生的推力和吸力均呈逐渐增强的趋势。     

Experimental study of an anti-icing method over an airfoil based on pulsed dielectric barrier discharge plasma

Aircraft icing has long been a plague to aviation for its serious threat to flight safety. Even though lots of methods for anti-icing have been in use or studied for quite a long time, new methods are still in great demand for both civil and military aircraft. The current study in this paper uses widely used Dielectric Barrier Discharge(DBD) plasma actuation to anti-ice on a NACA0012 airfoil model with a chord length of 53.5 cm in a closed-circuit icing wind tunnel. An actuator was installed at the leading edge of the airfoil model, and actuated by a pulsed low-temperature plasma power source. The actuator has two types of layout, a striped electrode layout and a meshy electrode layout.The ice accretion process or anti-icing process was recorded by a CCD camera and an infrared camera. Instantaneous pictures and infrared contours show that both types of DBD plasma actuators have the ability for anti-ice under a freestream velocity of 90 m/s, a static temperature of -7℃,an Median Volume droplet Diameter(MVD) of 20 lm, and an Liquid Water Content(LWC) of 0.5 g/m~3. The detected variations of temperatures with time at specific locations reveal that the temperatures oscillate for some time after spraying at first, and then tend to be nearly constant values.This shows that the key point of the anti-icing mechanism with DBD plasma actuation is to achieve a thermal equilibrium on the model surface. Besides, the power consumption in the anti-icing process was estimated in this paper by Lissajous figures measured by an oscilloscope, and it is lower than those of existing anti-icing methods. The experimental results presented in this paper indicate that the DBD plasma anti-icing method is a promising technique in the future.     

Flow separation control on swept wing with nanosecond pulse driven DBD plasma actuators

A 15° swept wing with dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuator is designed.Experimental study of flow separation control with nanosecond pulsed plasma actuation is performed at flow velocity up to 40 m/s. The effects of the actuation frequency and voltage on the aerodynamic performance of the swept wing are evaluated by the balanced force and pressure measurements in the wind tunnel. At last, the performances on separation flow control of the three types of actuators with plane and saw-toothed exposed electrodes are compared. The optimal actuation frequency for the flow separation control on the swept wing is detected, namely the reduced frequency is 0.775, which is different from 2-D airfoil separation control. There exists a threshold voltage for the low swept wing flow control. Before the threshold voltage, as the actuation voltage increases, the control effects become better. The maximum lift is increased by 23.1% with the drag decreased by 22.4% at 14°, compared with the base line. However, the best effects are obtained on actuator with plane exposed electrode in the low-speed experiment and the abilities of saw-toothed actuators are expected to be verified under high-speed conditions.     

Energy-saving and accurate motion control of a hydraulic actuator with uncertain negative loads

Pump controlled hydraulic actuators are wildly used in the aerospace industry owing to the advantages of energy-saving and integrated configurations. Negative loads may occur to actuators due to external force loads or the inertial force when the actuator decelerates significantly. Uncertain negative load working conditions may cause cavitation, actuator vibration, and even instability to the motion control if the actuator is without sufficient meter-out damping. Various types of hydraulic configuration schemes have been proposed to deal with negative loads of hydraulic actuators. However, few of them can simultaneously achieve energy saving and high control accuracy. This study proposes an energy-saving and accurate motion tracking strategy for a hydraulic actuator with uncertain negative loads. The actuator’s motion is driven by a servomotor pump, which gives full play to the advantage of energy-saving. The meter-out pressure is controlled by proportional valves to provide the optimized meter-out damping. The nonlinear adaptive robust control law is designed, which guarantees the control stability and achieve high tracking accuracy. An integrated direct/indirect adaptation law obtains satisfactory parameter estimations and model compensation for asymptotic motion tracking. Comparative experiments under different working conditions were performed to validate the advantages of the proposed control strategy.     

Recent developments in thermal characteristics of surface dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuators driven by sinusoidal high-voltage power

Flow control using surface Dielectric Barrier Discharge(DBD) plasma actuators driven by a sinusoidal alternating-current power supply has gained significant attention from the aeronautic industry. The induced flow field of the plasma actuator, with the starting vortex in the wall jet,plays an important role in flow control. However, the energy consumed for producing the induced flow field is only a small fraction of the total energy utilized by the plasma actuator, and most of the total energy i...     

Experimental characteristics of a two-electrode plasma synthetic jet actuator array in serial

Plasma Synthetic Jet (PSJ) actuators have shown wide and promising application prospects in high-speed flow control, due to their advantages including high exhaust speed, wide frequency band, rapid response, and non-moving components. Although previous studies on PSJ actuators are abundant, most of them have focused on the performance of a single actuator. However, in practice, an actuator array is very necessary for large-scale aerodynamic actuation on account of the small affected area of a single PSJ. In this paper, the characteristics of a two-electrode plasma synthetic jet actuator array in serial are investigated experimentally. Compared to a parallel actuator array, the serial actuator array requires simpler power supply design and is much easier to realize. High-speed photography of the discharge evolution, voltage-current measurement, and shadowgraphy visualization are used in the investigation. Experimental results show that, for the serial actuator array, weak discharges happen firstly between energized and suspending electrodes, and then a strong pulse arc discharge is triggered. The breakdown voltage in serial is irrelevant to such factors as the number of actuators, the maximum or minimum gap in serial, the connection sequence, etc. It is mainly determined by the sum of gaps. For serial actuators with the same anode-to-cathode spacing, the energy deposition is the same, and the jet is synchronous and similar. Because of the entrainment and merging of adjacent jet vortices, the jet front speed of an aligned synchronous jet array increases as the orifice distance decreases. To achieve the highest jet front velocity, the orifice of the actuator has an optimal diameter.     

一种用于主动流动控制的气泡型微致动器

 面向先进主动流动控制,在国内率先研发了一种基于微机电系统(MEMS)的气泡型微致动器阵列技术。分析了气泡型微致动器用于主动流动控制的原理,阐述了致动器结构及其加工工艺。通过对气泡样件的压力载荷 变形行为的测试,表明其具有较好的线性和较大承载能力。结合不同翼型的风洞试验表明,微致动器作动可以影响翼型表面的压强分布,从而可用于增升等控制目的。     

复合材料在商用发动机作动系统中的应用分析

先进飞机及其发动机的需求是复合材料发展的强大推动力。基于复合材料的特点以及在航空中的应用情况,提出了发动机作动系统对复合材料的需求。根据商用发动机作动系统的定义与范围,详细论述了该系统未来发展方向对复合材料的应用需求。通过对比分析复合材料在国内外发动机作动系统中的应用现状,提出了钛基复合材料、Si C复合材料、变形记忆合金复合材料、压电功能复合材料等先进复合材料的应用发展方向,为中国商用发动机作动技术的发展提供相关建议。     

基于CFD研究等离子体环量控制流场特性

为了研究等离子体气动激励射流在翼型钝尾缘产生Coanda效应时对流场特性的影响,基于雷诺平均N-S方程中添加体积力源项的唯象学仿真方法,建立并优化了等离子体环量控制的数值计算模型,研究了基于分离点的不同激励器位置对流场的影响规律。结果表明,优化激励器位置后环量控制的效费比ΔCL／Cμ最高可以达到113．49。分析发现,当等离子体激励产生的激励射流刚好可以将分离点推移至压力面时,机翼有效弯度增加最为明显,激励效果最好。     

机电作动系统发展

 机电作动系统是通过控制电动机或电器的运行直接或间接地控制负载的运动,实现控制目标的位置伺服控制的一类系统的总称。针对飞行器用机电作动系统,概述了其应用概况、结构的演化过程、关键技术的发展过程,并就机电作动系统的发展动态做了介绍。在此基础上,提出了飞行器用机电作动系统的研究和发展的一些建议。