Metaheuristic algorithms for prognostics of on-board electromechanical actuators

In recent times the aerospace sector has been going through a deep and significant technological evolution. The main manufacturers are moving towards a new design philosophy: the More Electric Aircraft. The goal is to electrify all the utilities and sub-systems of the aircraft driven by a series of advantages such as, for example, an increase in engine efficiency, a reduction in overall weight, better maintainability, lower operating costs and an alignment with stringent environmental requirements. The development of fully electric flight controls plays a very important role in this design concept. Currently, however, electromechanical actuators are used only in secondary flight controls due to a poor knowledge of failure modes. An unscrupulous use of redundancies would nullify the advantages listed above. The aim of this work will be to identify and study a new prognostic method of these failures, using Bio-inspired metaheuristic optimization algorithms, which can lead us to safety levels at least equal to the current hydraulic system. To do this we will initially simulate in the Matlab-Simulink environment the response of an electromechanical actuator model subject to the imposed failure, then with a second simplified model, thanks to the chosen algorithms, we will try to recreate the response generated by the first.