Reliability based design recommendations for an electromechanical actuator test stand

Abstract

The quality and robustness of data sets of faulted electromechanical actuators (EMAs) are necessary to strengthen aircraft prognostic data analysis of such systems. Primary flight surface control actuators are of particular interest because the lack of known failure data erodes the confidence of the component and subsequently sub-system health predictions. To aid in this research, an EMA test stand has been designed and built to help in predicting the life and wear characteristics of faulted actuators with respect to their nominal counterparts. Faults are injected into the actuator during in-flight experiments while actuator parameters are recorded and then post-processed on the ground. This paper provides an assessment of the availability and reliability of the current EMA test stand design. Using the performance history of similar components in the field, this paper specifically demonstrates design aspects of the test stand that affect test system design and fault data quality. The study has been conducted to validate the test stand design, as well as offer design recommendations to increase test stand availability and ability to supply quality and robust fault to failure data sets.