High Power Driving and Control of Electrical Cylinder in Aerospace Erection System

Aerospace erection system is used to set up space aircraft launching platform, pulling the space aircrafts from horizontal to vertical position. Due to the large weight of aircraft, hydraulic cylinder is generally used as the actuator. However, it suffers from weak maintenance and environment adaptability, which leads to high fault rate during lifespan. As the development trend of all-electric drives, electric cylinder is generally getting matured and ready to replace conventional hydraulic solutions. In this paper, a high power electric cylinder with multiple servo motors in parallel is researched in details, especially focusing on the high power driving circuit design and start control strategy with heavy-duty in horizontal position. Firstly, the working principle of proposed electric cylinder system is explained. After that, the driving circuit is discussed in details to achieve multiple channel synchronous driving at the same time. Moreover, the heavy-duty start control of motors is put forward to achieve stable and safe launching process. Based on the techniques above, it is expected to provide a safe and high efficiency method for electric cylinder driving and control.