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."