Safety and Reliability Driven Design for the More Electric Aircraft

The move towards more electric aircraft (MEA) is revolutionizing major elements of the traditional aircraft design process. Manufacturers are trying to better utilize the opportunities, for example, distributed aircraft control and the higher voltage electrical power system, which the MEA offers for designing lighter, more functional and more environmentally friendly aircraft. This has seen a move away from the traditional heuristic design approach to instead consider a wider range of design possibilities. This move towards solving multi-objective optimization problems, that initially generate all possible design solutions and then converge to the most practically optimal one, via the application of operating constraints, is most evident at the actuator system level and at both the control and power system architecture level. This contribution not only provides an overview of evolving approaches to MEA design but also more specifically concentrates on the safety and reliability aspects embedded within the design process.