Session: Digital Hydraulic

Paper Number: 111940

111940 - An Analysis of a Digital Electro Hydrostatic Actuator for Application in Aircraft Flight Control Systems 

The development of more energy efficient systems has become a very important research topic in hydraulic systems nowadays, as these systems are used in a variety of applications, from medical equipment to construction machines and aerospace systems. The aeronautical industry has been looking for more efficient solutions that can be applied to aircraft in order to reduce fuel consumption. With the continuous growth in demand for air transport, the search for more efficient systems has increased considerably, bringing the concept called More Electric Aircraft, which aims to replace hydraulic and pneumatic systems with purely electrical systems. However, hydraulic actuators are unbeatable against other technologies in terms of reliability and power density, making them the predominant technology for application in primary and secondary flight control surface control actuators. Nevertheless, one of the disadvantages of using hydraulic systems is their low energy efficiency, which is caused by the use of restrictive control techniques that throttle the flow through valves and also due to internal leaks in the components. With the aim of improving the energy efficiency of hydraulic systems, digital hydraulics has become one of the main technologies currently under study, where control is done by connecting hydraulic components in parallel, or by fast switching techniques, which avoids the restrictive control and internal leaks. However, the use of this technology in aircraft is still new and its effects on flight control still need to be better investigated. Therefore, this paper presents a new hydraulic actuator using digital hydraulics to control aircraft flight control surfaces called Digital Electro Hydrostatic Actuator - DEHA. The studied actuator configuration uses a digital pump with three pumping units, eleven on/off valves and a cylinder with four chambers, where 43 different output velocities can be achieved by the actuator. A mathematical model was implemented in MATLAB/Simulink and Hopsan and was validated on a test bench built considering a controlled laboratory environment, where several experiments were carried out. In order to verify the performance of the proposed actuator in flight control, the model was applied to control an aircraft in delta-canard configuration in different operational envelopes using the Aero-Data Model in a Research Environment (ADMIRE) model. Furthermore, a model for the SHA (Servo Hydraulic Actuator) was developed to compare results and efficiencies. The results show that DEHA can keep the controllability of the ADMIRE aircraft in the proposed missions, where energy savings and energy efficiency, in the best scenario, are around 52 times and 90.5 times more, respectively, in relation to the SHA, which demonstrates that DEHA can be a promising solution for more efficient hydraulic systems in aeronautical applications.

Presenting Author: Vinícius Vigolo Federal University of Santa Catarina

Presenting Author Biography: Vinícius Vigolo was born in Videira, Santa Catarina, Brazil, in 1992. He received his Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) in 2018. He is currently working on the Laboratory of Hydraulic and Pneumatic Systems (LASHIP) towards his Ph.D, whose focus is the development of a sizing method for pneumatic actuation systems based on dynamic performance and energy efficiency. His areas of interest include pneumatic actuation systems, positioning systems, pneumatic systems design, and dynamic simulation.