Modeling the electrical part of an aeronautical EMA using Simscape

Abstract

The present paper contains an analysis of the operation of the electric motor of an aerospace electromechanical servomechanism present on a test bench. Particularly, the description focuses on the electromagnetic phenomena of the three-phase stator circuit and the switching of the stator phases as a function of the applied control logic and rotor position. The activity was made possible through the construction and validation of a ‘digital twin’ physical model in the Simscape environment, which faithfully reproduces the behaviour of a High-Fidelity numeric reference model, built in the Simulink environment, perfectly representative of the electromechanical servomechanism. The recourse to the construction of a ‘digital twin’ physical model was necessary as it allows the study of non-linear phenomena that are the main cause of failures of electromechanical servomechanisms. Therefore, the analysis conducted will allow prognostics algorithms to be developed in order to predict potential failure conditions and avoid potential hazardous situations in the operating environment.