Electro-Mechanical Actuators for the More Electric Aircraft (eBook)

This book presents recent results on fault diagnosis and condition monitoring of airborne electromechanical actuators, illustrating both algorithmic and hardware design solutions to enhance the reliability of onboard more electric aircraft.

The book begins with an introduction to the current trends in the development of electrically powered actuation systems for aerospace applications. Practical examples are proposed to help present approaches to reliability, availability, maintainability and safety analysis of airborne equipment. The terminology and main strategies for fault diagnosis and condition monitoring are then reviewed. The core of the book focuses on the presentation of relevant case studies of fault diagnosis and monitoring design for airborne electromechanical actuators, using different techniques. The last part of the book is devoted to a summary of lessons learned and practical suggestions for the design of fault diagnosis solutions of complex airborne systems.

The book is written with the idea of providing practical guidelines on the development of fault diagnosis and monitoring algorithms for airborne electromechanical actuators. It will be of interest to practitioners in aerospace, mechanical, electronic, reliability and systems engineering, as well as researchers and postgraduates interested in dynamical systems, automatic control and safety-critical systems.

Advances in Industrial Control reports and encourages the transfer of technology in control engineering. The rapid development of control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an extended exposition of new work in all aspects of industrial control.

Mirko Mazzoleni is an assistant professor of data analysis at the University of Bergamo, Italy. His research interests regards nonparametric system identification and fault diagnosis methods, and he is the author of several scientific papers on those fields. He actively contributed to European research projects on fault diagnosis methods for electromechanical actuators (FP7 CleanSky JTI HOLMES project and H2020 CleanSky2 JTI REPRISE project). He is co-founder of AISent srl, a start-up company that engineers artificial intelligence solutions in the fields of manufacturing, life science and social innovation.

Gianpietro Di Rito is an assistant professor of aerospace systems at the University of Pisa, Italy. His research interests are mainly focused on modelling/simulation, control, health-monitoring and testing of aircraft actuation systems, with particular reference to electromechanical actuators for primary flight surfaces. He is the author of several scientific papers on the aforementioned topics, and he has contributed to several research-and-development programmes on innovative actuation systems design (i.e. FP7 and Horizon 2020 CleanSky JTI, H2020 PARSIFAL project, and more).

Fabio Previdi is a full professor of control systems at the University of Bergamo, Italy. He is author of more than 130 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, spanning topics such as fault detection, system identification and control applications. He is the principal investigator of two European projects on the fault detection and monitoring of electromechanical actuators in aerospace: HOLMES and REPRISE. He is very active in technology transfer to industrial and manufacturing companies. He is co-founder of e-Novia, the startup factory, a high-growth company active in creating new high-tech startup companies in cooperation with universities and research centers.