Health and Usage Monitoring System (HUMS) Strategy to enhance the Maintainability & Flight Safety in a Flight Control Electromechanical Actuator (EMA)

Abstract

Concerning flight control actuation systems, the current state of the art is the fly-by-wire control of servo actuators hydraulically operated. In the last decades several research programs have been dedicated to analyze the replacement of these equipments with the implementation of Electro-Hydrostatic Actuators (EHA) or Electro-Mechanical Actuators (EMA), pursuing the challenge to get More Electrical Aircraft (MEA).This paper focuses on the HUMS strategy proposed to provide diagnosis and prognosis of the EMA as one way to enhance Flight Safety and Maintainability for its use in Primary Flight Controls.Considerations related to Flight Safety are analyzed, specially linked to the main problem associated to the EMA, the critical effects derived from the mechanical jamming of some parts of the EMA, and the advantages of the HUMS implementation to anticipate and mitigate these consequences.