Design of High-Power Dual-Redundancy Electro-Mechanical Actuator for Scout and Strike UAV

• Published in: IOP conference series. Materials Science and Engineering Vol. 790; no. 1; pp. 12159 - 12164
• Main Authors: Yang, Tao, Wang, Shuaibing, Yang, Jinpeng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 01.03.2020
• Subjects: Actuator design; Aircraft accidents & safety; Battlefields; Circuits; Coils (windings); Control systems design; dual-redundancy; EMA; Flight conditions; Flight safety; Flight tests; Ground tests; Redundancy; UAV; Unmanned aerial vehicles
• ISSN: 1757-8981; 1757-899X
• DOI: 10.1088/1757-899X/790/1/012159

As the technology advance of UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), the large UAV is a prevalent trend, which is widely used for scout and strike in modern military battlefield. The flight safety is rather important because of the cost increase of UAV with various airborne devices equipped. EMA (Electromechanical Actuator) is one of the key components in UAV system. Whether its performance is reliable or not determines the flight safety. In this paper, in order to design high-power EMA for scout and strike UAV with fast response and high stability to ensure UAV safety, dual-redundancy technology is adopted. There are two communication interfaces between the actuator and the flight mission computer. The control circuit and the drive circuit are in the form of dual redundancy, while there are two sets of windings in the motor. The controller and actuator design are introduced in details one by one. Also, the paper presents the dual-redundancy design scheme. Several ground tests simulating the real flight conditions are conducted, proving that the EMA design is feasible and its performance is satisfactory. The UAV flight tests are needed later in the future to verify EMA performance in practice.