Thermal design of an electro-mechanical actuator for an aircraft rudder using CFD simulation

An Electro Mechanical Actuator(EMA) is proposed to replace a conventional hydro mechanical actuator in the rudder of a twin engined commercial aircraft. This paper considers the thermal management of the actuator and investigates passive cooling. The cooling of the EMA motor becomes critical during ETOPS operation, when the aircraft is operated on only one engine. This paper provides design guidelines on the thermal management of EMAs motors in a rudder cavity based on a series of 3-dimensional computational fluid dynamics simulations.