Virtual Integration of an All-Electric Flight Control System Architecture and the Aircraft Electrical Power Distribution Network

The aviation industry is facing major challenges due to increased environmental requirements that are driven by economic constraints. For this reason, guidelines like "Flightpath 2050", the official guide of European aviation, call for significant reductions in pollutant emissions. The concept of the More Electric Aircraft offers promising perspectives to meet these demands. A key-enabler for this concept is the integration of new technologies on board of the next generation of civil transportation aircraft. Examples are electro-mechanical actuators for primary and secondary flight controls or the fuel cell technology as innovative electrical energy supply system. Due to the high complexity and interdisciplinarity, the development of such systems is an equally challenging and time-consuming process. To support the classical development process, a continuous model-based approach for the design and test of complex aircraft systems is currently developed at the Hamburg University of Technology. In addition to the computer-aided engineering, this approach includes the implementation of virtual integration studies at the system level. This feature provides the opportunity for an early execution of performance evaluations to assess the system requirements and identify errors before a real prototype has emerged. Within this paper, this approach is described in further detail and illustrated on the basis of an exemplary case study, dealing with the virtual integration of an all-electric flight control system architecture into the electrical power distribution network of a single-aisle short-range research aircraft.