A System and Mission Level Analysis of Electrically Actuated Flight Control Surfaces using Pacelab SysArc

Abstract

This work pertains to the analysis of electric control surface actuation for a More Electric Aircraft at the actuator, vehicle, and mission levels. Two different actuation solutions utilizing electrohydrostatic and electromechanical actuators were identified, and their pertinent characteristics were developed using Pacelab SysArc, an aircraft system architecture modeling and analysis tool. The existing capabilities of the tool were augmented as required to facilitate the proposed analysis. Using the Boeing 737-800 aircraft as a test case, the performance of both the configurations was evaluated over the course of a typical aircraft mission. The intent of this work is to analyze whether one of the two selected architectures significantly outperforms the other with regard to a vehicle-level and a mission-level metric, or whether the choice between these two architectures in a future More Electric Aircraft is likely to be driven predominantly by other considerations.