Objectives and scope

The R3ASC'14 conference will address the latest developments in aerospace actuation since 2012, when a hundred worldwide industrialists, specialists and  scientists attended the fifth R3ASC conference.

For its second century of development, aerospace has well integrated cost, safety and environmental issues. Beside aerodynamics, structures, engines, avionics and operation, actuation has clearly been identified as a key contributor to progress towards cheaper, safer and greener aerospace. Indeed, landing gears, flight controls and engine control involve safety critical actuation systems, equipments and components that can no more be designed in bottom-up view based essentially on well-established technology and processes.  However, the pure top-down approach, driven by global needs and implementing the standardized systems-engineering process has pointed out the need for innovation through technological step changes. Unfortunately, the expensive and time consuming maturation of demonstrated scientific concepts towards certified commercial products is not straightforward. In particular due to unanticipated side or snowball effects. In the more electrical aircraft, this is magnified by the increasing complexity of signal and power systems that interact at aircraft level. The number of design options at actuator level explodes when functional architecture, topology, power management and monitoring are addressed are aircraft level. For this reason, the 2010s appear as very exciting for aerospace actuation. Cutting development costs and reducing time to market in a more and more competitive world require step changes in applied science as well as in technology and in processes.

In order to offer the delegates the widest view on recent advances in actuation systems and components, authors are invited to submit scientific or technical communications dealing with:

• application to commercial, civil and military market: aircrafts, helicopters, launchers, unmanned aerial vehicles and weapons
• multidisciplinary optimisation, robust design, multidomain and multiscale approaches
• architectures for signal/power transmission and transformation
• reliability, safety, health monitoring
• power generation and distribution, power management
• mutualisation, modularization, standardization
• hydraulically / electrically / hybrid powered actuation: PbW, SHA, EMA, EHA,…
• signal transmission and control: FbW, FbL, wireless, smart actuators,…
• energy saving, more environment-friendly designs
• components: direct drive valves, mechanical reducers, power electronics, power drives, brakes, clutches, effort/speed summers
• on ground and in-flight tests, verification and validation
• simulation, virtual prototyping, virtual test-benches
• integration, operation, maintenance, service withdrawal