Fault Detection and Isolation of the Electro-Mechanical Actuator Based on BIT

Large UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) for scout and strike is a new trend in modern battlefield because of economy in use, high attendance and low casualty, whose safety is of top concern. EMA (Electromechanical Actuator), as the key component, impacts on UAV a lot. Its performance decides whether the flight is safe or not. In this paper, BIT (Built-In Test) function is designed according to characteristics of EMA with dual-redundancy used for scout and strike UAV. Based on the BIT analysis and BIT design principle, the BIT test methods are brought up. Thanks to the BIT design, the corresponding fault detection and fault isolation of EMA are available which are presented in details. The paper tells the faults that can be detected and then describe how to isolate them. In order to verify the validity of BIT design and the effectiveness of fault detection as well as fault isolation, the corresponding experimental platform is built and several experiments are conducted. The results show that the rates of fault detection, fault isolation and false alarm is desirable. The methods in this paper is feasible and effective.