Lumped Node Thermal Modeling of EMA with FEA Validation

Abstract

The development of electromechanical actuators (EMAs) is the key technology to build an all-electric aircraft. One of the greatest hurdles to replacing all hydraulic actuators on an aircraft with EMAs is the acquisition, transport and rejection of waste heat generated within the EMAs. The absence of hydraulic fluids removes an attractive and effective means of acquiring and transporting the heat. To address thermal management under limited cooling options, accurate spatial and temporal information on heat generation must be obtained and carefully monitored. This model can also be incorporated into lumped node magnetic and electric model to develop a full multi-physics, multi-scale simulation engine. This engine can accurately analyze the complete EMA system in a systematic scale and whole-mission duration.

Modeling of forced convection heat transfer from the swing plate on an industrial robot

“…Thermal issue of an industrial robot has been of great interest for long time because unexpected temperature rise will not only have a negative effect on robot accuracy [1][2][3], but also result in failure of the temperature-sensitive components in a robot, for instance, motors and sealing [4,5]. This is particularly true for the cases of small robots which are usually limited in size, but having higher energy density than the large ones.…”