Real-time Simulation of Nonlinear Transmission Behavior in Electro-Mechanical Flight Control Systems

This work presents a modular MATLAB/Simulink1 block library to model electro-mechanical flight control actuation systems for high-fidelity simulations executed on real-time targets with limited computing capacity. The described design implements the most important nonlinear effects and introduces techniques allowing simplified parametrization of kinematics on basis of existing systems. The paper demonstrates a model for electro-mechanical actuators with regard to thermal behavior and accounts for stiff transitions e.g. in backlashes and clutches. The concept is proven by simulating a redundant drive train of an optionally-piloted aircraft and comparing it with an equivalent multi-body simulation.