Airborne Electro-Mechanical Actuator Test Stand for Development of Prognostic Health Management Systems

Being relatively new to the field, however, EMA lack the knowledge base compared to what is accumulated for the more traditional actuator types, especially when it comes to fault detection and prognosis. Scarcity of health monitoring data from fielded systems and prohibitive costs of carrying out real flight tests create the need to build high-fidelity system models and design affordable yet realistic experimental setups.

The objective of this work is to build an EMA test stand that, unlike current laboratory stands typically weighing in excess of one metric ton, is portable enough to be easily placed aboard a wide variety of aircraft. This stand, named the FLEA (for Flyable Electro- mechanical Actuator test stand), allows testing EMA fault detection and prognosis technologies in flight environment, thus substantially increasing their technology readiness level – all without the expense of dedicated flights, as the stand is designed to function as a non-intrusive secondary payload.