SPECIAL REPORT: HIGH PERFORMANCE ACTUATOR TECHNOLOGY
Greater Customisation The market also calls for more and more customized actuators in order to allow for a better integration of the actuators within the airframe, payload, or engine. One example is an actuator for the actuation of the butterfly valve in the throttle body of internal combustion engines. Such an actuator needs a customized mechanical interface in order to couple with the shaft that turns the butterfly valve. The actuator also needs to operate at higher ambient temperatures as they exist near any internal combustion engine. All the used actuator components need to be selected and qualified for those challenging environmental conditions such as temperature, vibration, shock loads and electromagnetic noise. A teach-in feature allows adjusting the actuator to the mechanical end points of a throttle body to compensate mechanical tolerances. The aluminum actuator housings of Volz actuators feature a special surface treatment, which provides an optimum protection against corrosion in the harsh environment as it exists under the engine cowling.
VOLZ SERVOS Manufacturer of actuators since 1983
DA 26-90° - customized actuator featuring a selflocking gear train, right-angled out-put shaft and optional oil-filling for deep-sea applications
Throttle actuator DA 20-T
actuator calls, however, for fairly thorough predesign work as all potential failure modes and risks have to be analyzed, estimated, mitigated or avoided. The certification of a UAV actuator will create yet another challenge that needs to be tackled. The actuator’s bus interface is another area for enhancements. There is a growing interest in using standardized, CAN-based busses. This will allow a much deeper integration of the actuators into the UAV’s flight control system.
Looking to the Future The list of new requirements coming from the UAV market keeps growing. This list ranges from simple adaptation requests of the existing range of actuators up to the need for a fully redundant and fail-safe actuator, which is certified by civil and military aviation authorities. A fully redundant actuator design may reuse many existing design elements that are incorporated in today’s actuator range. The design of a redundant
In summary it can be said that the evolution of actuators used in UAVs was quite substantial within the last years. The focus has primarily been on improving performance and durability, but also on implementing new applicationspecific actuator features. In the future the focus will be clearly on safety and fail-safe operation of UAVs, which require coming up with entirely new concepts and designs.
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24.01.13 15:51