Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) of Electromechanical Actuation (EMA) Systems for Next-Generation Aircraft

摘要

Electromechanical Actuation (EMA) systems are becoming preferred choice in aircraft applications owing to their response time, power consumption, heat load, peak power, and weight related advantages over the conventional hydraulic actuation systems. EMAs are already in use for non-flight-critical functions in aircraft, and there is a great deal of interest for using them for primary flight control functions in next generation aircraft. For critical systems, real-time and ahead-of-time verification of a system's ability to satisfy the functional requirements is imperative; especially, in aerospace applications. Capabilities to detect and identify faults in EMAs in real-time; detect degradations and estimate their levels; and predict the time to reach unacceptable degradation-level can lead the way to wide acceptance of EMAs in flight critical functions. Through a collaborative effort of Qualtech Systems, Inc. (QSI), Lockheed Martin, and Moog Inc. developed a Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) scheme for EMAs. The scheme, hosted in QSI's TEAMS (Testability Engineering and Maintenance System) software platform is capable of performing real-time and offline fault/degradation detection and identification; diagnosis of root causes; degradation condition identification; and degradation trend forecasting. The scheme has been tested using experimental data from Moog's EMA Test-stand and NASA-ARC's Flyable Electro-mechanical Actuator (FLEA) Testbed.