Analysis of the Effects of Modeling Depth and Parameter Uncertainties on the System Behavior of a Multifunctional High Lift Actuation System

Modeling and simulation have become an important aspect of the design and development process of aircraft systems. During the design of high lift actuation systems for example, the dynamic loads in the transmission are estimated by simulation. Nevertheless huge development efforts and financial resources are still invested in physical testing. These integration and testing phases take place at a late stage in the design process. Therefore, identified malfunctions and development errors lead to undesired iterations and thus to high costs as well as to an increased development time. This issue is emphasized as system complexity is rises continuously in conjunction with an increase in the number of interconnections and functionality. Hence, early and continuous virtual testing activities on the overall system level become increasingly important. In order to establish such a process, this paper analyzes the effects of modeling depth and parameter uncertainties on the overall system behavior considering nominal operation as well as failure cases. It identifies which test cases can be performed in which development phase depending on the information required. The modeling and simulation is implemented in the multiphysics and object-oriented simulation environment Matlab/Simulink/Simscape using an example of a multifunctional high lift actuation system.