Spall Fault Quantification Method for Flight Control Electromechanical Actuator

Flight control electro-mechanical actuators (EMAs) are among the primary onboard systems that significantly influence the reliability and safety of unmanned aerial vehicles. Recent reliability studies have shown that the ball-screw element of a flight control EMA is subject to oscillating operating conditions that may initiate rapid degradation, such as fatigue spall defects. Accordingly, detecting and quantifying such faults are crucial for developing efficient fault prognostic and remaining useful life estimation capabilities. In this study, a vibration-based fault quantification method is developed to quantify the fatigue faults of a ball-screw mechanism of an EMA. The method is based on identifying the ball passing instants through a localized surface defect on the vibrational jerk rather than the vibrational acceleration measurement. The jerk is numerically determined from conventional accelerometers using a Savitzky–Golay differentiator. This method was successfully tested for ball bearings and it is adjusted in this paper for ball-screw faults. The experimental validation is investigated on a set of fault-seeded samples on NASA’s Ames Research Center Flyable Electro-Mechanical Actuator test stand.