Parallel positioning of twin EMAs for Fault-Tolerant flap applications

This work describes the control technique of a Fault-Tolerant electromechanical system aimed to the actuation of the flap panels of the aircraft. The application provides the adoption of a couple of Fault-Tolerant permanent magnet synchronous motors designed to match minimum load requirements even in case of a fault in one or two phases. The consolidated mechanical synchronization of the mutual actuation is replaced by a fully electronic solution. The usual master-slave configuration of the two actuators with speed control and correction of the tracking error is replaced by the adoption of the parallel position control. This solution allows to avoid a complex management of the tracking error and applies to the couple of actuators the same Fault-Tolerant philosophy adopted inside for the single multiphase motor. The technique is developed and tested on a test-bed designed to emulate the real aerodynamic load condition. The achieved results show the effectiveness of the proposed solution.