Towards more electric drives for embedded applications: (re)discovering the advantages of hydraulics

International audienceThe paper deals with the comparison of hydraulically and electrically powered aerospace actuators. Power sizing, energy consumption, natural dynamics, reliability and integration are addressed in order to illustrate the differences at functional level but also considering the parasitic effects that are inherent to the selected technology. It is shown that hydraulic actuators are only a little affected by thermal issues and do not reflect a significant mass at the load level. They also perform simply de-clutch or effort limitation functions. At aircraft level, the comparison of both technologies is illustrated using the example of electrically powered braking. The paper concludes by pointing up the need to put research and development efforts on hybrid solutions that can merge the advantages of each individual technology