Simulation Based Design of Electromechanical Actuators With Modelica

This article deals with a methodology for the computer-aided design of electromechanical actuators. In the frame of the preliminary design, it focuses on the selection and sizing of various components used in the actuator architectures. The addressed design criteria are the mass and reliability for given effort and speed profiles. The developed library of components for the simulation takes advantage of the non-causal and object oriented characteristics of the Modelica language. Thus, the library models can carry out an inverse simulation of the energy flows going from the mechanical load to the power source. Additionally, the number of parameters to be entered by the user has been minimized by the use of scaling laws, which return all the parameters that are necessary for the simulation. At the end of the article, the proposed approach is illustrated with the sizing and comparison of actuator architectures for an aircraft landing gear steering system.© 2009 ASME