The safety critical electric machines and drives in the more electric aircraft: A survey

TLDR

The aviation industry is moving toward More Electric Aircraft, replacing hydraulic, mechanical, and bleed‑air systems with electromechanical and electro‑hydraulic actuators, which increases electrical loading and drives research into power‑by‑wire and variable‑frequency or DC distribution. This paper presents the most challenging electric machine and drive applications for the next generation of aircraft from an electrical engineering perspective. The authors focus on safety‑critical drives, specifically flight‑surface actuators, fuel pumps, and generators.

Abstract

In order to improve aircraft efficiency, reliability and maintainability, the aerospace world has found in the progressive electrification of on-board services the way to reduce or to remove the presence of the hydraulic, mechanical and the bleed air/pneumatic systems. This concept is called More Electric Aircraft (MEA), which involves the introduction of the Electromechanical actuators (EMAs) and the electro-hydraulics actuators (EHAs) for the actuation of the flight surfaces of wide-body aircraft, moving from the "fly-by wire" to the "power-by wire" concept. The resulting step change in aircraft electrical loading will have far reaching implications for the electrical generation system. Considerable effort is being directed towards realizing the so-called More Electric Engine (MEE), which foresee an integration of the electrical generator directly inside the main gas turbine engine. Also the entire electrical distribution system is subject to radical revisiting, with a trend which is leaving the constant frequency AC energy distribution in favor of variable frequency or DC solutions. Hence, it is evident the MEA trend increments the technical challenges and research topics for the electrical engineering in the aeronautic applications. The aim of the paper is the presentation, from the electrical engineering point of view, of some of the most challenging application of electric machines and drives in the incoming new aircraft generation. There are too many on board electric components and systems to be analyzed: the authors centre the attention on the most safety critical drives: flight surface actuators, fuel pumps and generators.