Development of a digital twin for the validation of prognostic algorithms for electromechanical actuators

For several years now, modern aircraft design has been based on a "More Electric" philosophy. The latter is a concept of great interest to the aerospace industry as it allows the overall efficiency of aircraft to be increased while ensuring a perfect balance between safety and reliability. The thesis work presented is based on the study of an electro-mechanical actuator (EMA) which represents an innovative solution for replacing the electro-hydraulic actuators (EHA) widely used in the aerospace industry. In fact, simultaneously with the development of the "More Electric" project philosophy, there has been increasing interest in the study of EMAs and their use as actuation systems for flight controls. The thesis focuses on the description and simulation, through a numerical reference model developed in the Matlab-Simulink environment, of the operation of an electromechanical servomechanism on a test bench. In addition, it was necessary to build and validate a similar "twin" model in the Simscape environment to describe real phenomena related to non-linearities. The validation process of the model produced in Simscape was characterised by the choice of different elementary blocks and the tuning of some parameters. This allowed simulations to be carried out which faithfully reproduced the real behaviour of the characteristic quantities of the electromechanical actuator on the test bench. The various simulations confirmed the correct modelling of the electromechanical servomechanism in Simscape, allowing the subsequent development of diagnostic and prognostic algorithms.