Model-Based Oscillation Monitoring of a Redundant Electro-Mechanical Actuation System for Leading-Edge Slats

This paper presents a virtual-sensing and monitoring framework for a dual-redundant electro-mechanical actuation system developed by UMBRAGROUP S.p.A. for the leading-edge slat of a future more-electric aircraft. Slat motion is reconstructed exclusively from actuator-side load-cell and position measurements using an inverse reduced-order load-path model, enabling surface dynamics estimation without any mounted sensors. Detrimental oscillations are detected at each station using a velocity-mismatch metric and counter-based decision logic with gating and hysteresis to ensure robustness against noise and short transients. The effectiveness of the approach and its sensitivity to actuator-slat damping variations are assessed in MATLAB/Simulink using a high-fidelity nonlinear model of the coupled actuation system. Results indicate accurate slat motion reconstruction and stable monitoring flags, enabling discrimination between damped oscillatory transients and resonance-driven amplitude growth under representative loads.