Reliability-Adaptive Control of Aerospace Electromechanical Actuators with Coupled Degradation via Stochastic MPC
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Electromechanical Actuators (EMAs) are critical components in More-Electric Aircraft (MEA) and Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLVs), yet they remain vulnerable to jamming and fatigue failures under high-stress flight maneuvers. Existing Health-Aware Flight Control approaches often treat failure prediction and control allocation as separate processes, leading to suboptimal sortie generation rates. This paper presents a reliability-adaptive control framework that unifies trajectory tracking with online health management. Empowered by a hierarchical mission-to-control architecture, the system employs stochastic Model Predictive Control (SMPC) to actively modulate control surface deflection profiles in real time. A comparative case study on a coupled EMA drivetrain demonstrates that the proposed controller extends useful life by 65% compared to fixed-gain baselines, achieves 23% higher mission performance than reactive PID controllers, and it maintains zero constraint violations throughout the mission by optimally distributing the health budget across mission phases.
Source: Mathematics
DOI: 10.3390/math14040737
Author: Le Qi
Institution: Beihang University
Language: English
Subfield: Control and Systems Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,137
OpenAlex ID: W7130943513
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