Model-Based Design and Evaluation Approach of Redundant Electro-Mechanical Actuator Control Architecture for eVTOL

Conventional electric motor-driven systems in industrial applications mainly trust on empirical approach and rules of thumb, which are widely implemented in systems with low safety requirements and without regard to requirement on weight. However, for the innovative applications on electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, which is in short of engineering experience but still under the regulation of extremely strict safety standards specified in airworthiness provisions, a new and more rigorous method is imperative. This study proposes a model-based approach for designing and evaluating fault-tolerant system architectures for electro-mechanical actuators of eVTOL aircraft. This approach is a traceable workflow from requirements to hardware, functional architecture and candidate physical architectures are derived during the process, physical models are built accordingly. The models facilitate the evaluation of multiple operating conditions and possible failure conditions based on simulation results, which help to screen out the most advantageous and robust architecture design. The safety level of novel actuator systems can thus be quantitatively evaluated by the proposed method.