Design, Testing and Certification Challenges in Development of Rotorcraft Flight Control and Utility Hydraulic Actuators

Aircraft design is an example of complex engineering and actuation system is one of the critical and flight safety part of Fixed wing/Rotary wing aircraft. The application of Actuators in an aircraft is more and more varied and important. ASERDC, HAL- Lucknow division has expertise in design, testing, certification, and production of actuators for Civil and Military applications used for various roles that include operation of Undercarriage, Doors, Air Brakes, Yaw damper, Flight control rotor actuators and similar other applications. The various challenges and failures encountered during process of realization of these utility and flight control actuators with numerous learnings from design phase to certification phase and so on. These challenges and learnings are discussed in this paper through examples mainly through Flight control rotor actuators. This paper discusses about specification, development, and the testing aspects along with its functioning and architecture. It also covers several important points which need to be considered during design, manufacturing, testing and certification stages for these complex servo hydraulic actuators.