Power Systems and Requirements for Integration of Smart Structures into Aircraft

Electrical power distribution for recently developed smart actuators becomes an important air-vehicle challenge if projected smart actuation benefits are to be met. Among the items under development are variable shape inlets and control surfaces that utilize shape memory alloys (SMAs); full-span, chord-wise and span-wise contouring trailing control surfaces that use SMA or piezoelectric materials for actuation; and other strain-based actuators for buffet load alleviation, flutter suppression and flow control. At first glance, such technologies afford overall vehicle performance improvement. However, integration system impacts have yet to be determined or quantified. Power systems to support smart structures initiatives are the focus of the current paper. The paper has been organized into five main topics for further discussion: (1) air-vehicle power system architectures – standard and advanced distribution concepts for actuators, (2) smart wing actuator power requirements and results highlighting wind tunnel power measurements from SMA and piezoelectric ultrasonic motor-actuated control surfaces and different dynamic pressure and angle of attack; (3) vehicle electromagnetic effects (EME) issues, (4) power supply design considerations for smart actuators featuring the aircraft power and actuator interface, and (5) summary and conclusions.