HEALTH MONITORING OF ELECTRICAL ACTUATORS FOR LANDING GEARS

There are numerous benefits associated with replacing hydraulic actuators with electrical counterparts as part of an all electric landing gear including reduced consumption of non-propulsive engine power, reduced weight, reduced cost and the elimination of hydraulic systems. The development of health monitoring systems to support the introduction of electrical actuation systems into landing gears will aid in guaranteeing reliability and to optimise landing gear maintenance activities.One of the difficulties with designing health monitoring for industrial integration involves the large number of subject areas involved, ranging from architectural design, software and signal processing design, hardware selection and business modelling. The reason that many health monitoring systems never reach full development maturity is that there is a failure in realising a holistic design process. The purpose of this thesis and the overall contribution which has been made is to bring together a combined understanding of landing gear design, health monitoring and the business environment for aircraft maintenance in order for a holistic design process for landing gear health monitoring to be realised.