An intelligent design method for actuation system architecture optimization for more electrical aircraft

The design of flight control actuation system is facing major challenge due to the development of more electrical aircraft. The task is to find the combinations of power sources, actuators and computers, which becomes more complex because of the new power sources and actuator types of more electrical aircraft. It is impossible to determine optimal architecture by traditional trial-and-error method within acceptable time. Therefore, the need for new methodology for actuation system architecture design emerges. This study proposes an intelligent design method which has steps of design space exploration of actuation system architectures by constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) method, safety assessment process to exclude unsafety solution, multi-objectives optimization to get Pareto optimal front and comprehensive decision for final architecture via analytic hierarchy process. And the design method is implemented in python and a software platform is developed. Furthermore, within the paper a case study for A350 flight control actuation system is presented to testify the application of this methodology. Compared to the traditional hydraulic architecture, the optimal architecture is more competitive in weight, power and cost. At the same time, the optimal architecture is found in less than 30 minutes among 10⁷⁵ candidates, which greatly reduces the design cycle. This method deals with the problem in the design of flight control actuation system.