A novel electro hydrostatic actuator system with energy recovery module for more electric aircraft

Electro-hydrostatic actuator (EHA) is a highly integrated local hydraulic actuation system for more electric aircraft (MEA). However, the motor heating has always been the bottleneck in actual applications. In this paper, a novel energy-recovery EHA (ER-EHA) with specific hydraulic energy recovery unit is proposed to solve the problem. ER-EHA can reduce the heating of the motor, which is beneficial to improve the reliability and mean time before failure of the system. Besides, the power resistor is eliminated in the new system, so the volume of the system is reduced, and the power-to-weight ratio of the system is improved, which satisfies the needs of MEA. Simulations can prove the effect of energy recovery unit. To show the efficiency of our proposed structure, a specific test bench called redundant degree heterogeneous drives loads test bench is designed, and experiments are carried out in this paper. The results reflect its contribution to motor heating reduction.