Robust and adaptive power generation, control and actuation system for air flow control of jet engines

The paper presents the result of a study aimed at defining an innovative architecture for an airflow control system of a military jet engine, able to enhance the system performance, reliability and survivability, as well as to reduce the power consumption. This is obtained by combining an innovative architecture of the hydraulic power generation system with a hybrid hydraulic and electrical actuation for the flight safety critical actuators, and with suitable health management algorithms. The hydraulic power generation unit uses variable pressure, smart control and a back-up emergency power source. A key issue is to obtain all these functions while reducing to a minimum the number of additional components with respect to the conventional hydraulic power generation systems. The paper firstly presents the state-of-art of these systems and their critical issues, outlines the alternative solutions, and then describes architecture, characteristics and performance of the airflow control system that was eventually defined as a result of a research activity aimed at moving beyond the present state-of-art in this field.