Design of SoC based Compact, High Bandwidth Electro-Mechanical Actuation (EMA) System for Aerospace Application

Abstract

Actuation systems are widely used in the aerospace vehicle for controlling the motion against the varying aerodynamic load. The Electro-mechanical actuations system provides a suitable and reliable solution against the electro-hydraulic (EHA) systems. The EMA System consists of BLDC motor coupled with the transmission mechanism and is operated by a servo controller. The servo controller is having control loop processing part along with the power electronics. The EMA System design for aerospace application is complicated due to the space constraint and operation of it under varying aerodynamic loads. High Slew rate and high bandwidth is required in the Re-entry part of the trajectory of the vehicles, this again poses the due problem in handling high current in power Electronics and computational intensive task for handling 04 channels simultaneously. The Servo Controller is configured with Smart Fusion SOC (System On Chip) with required peripherals and Switching Devices. In the Motor design, the motor time constant is kept low to achieve the high bandwidth and desired closed loop performance. This paper presents the design philosophy adopted for a particular aerospace vehicle with Re-entry application. The paper deals with the servo controller and BLDC motor design and its performance optimization. The realized prototype results show the promising results and can create a baseline for critical aerospace application.