IF ONE COMPONENT FAILS – THE SYSTEM CONTINUES. A single system failure, such as the motor, should not result in a complete system breakdown or disruption. This is precisely where SOBEK’s redundancy system comes into play.
The UAV market, like the emerging market for eVTOL aircraft, is characterized by numerous players, from large corporations to start-ups who want to get involved. Even if only a handful will be successful on the market, they often have one thing in common: in the future, they want to fly autonomously over populated areas.
Assessing this risk will result in redundancy systems becoming increasingly important. The failure of a system, such as the motor, must not be synonymous with a failure or crash of the entire system. Reliability will be decisive for the operating license in the future. This underlines the increasing importance of civil aviation standards in the development, manufacture and maintenance of UAVs and eVTOL aircraft. The success of the UAV and eVTOL business models thus largely depends on the implementation of far-reaching safety requirements.
It is precisely at this point that the redundancy system from SOBEK comes into play.
To reduce the probability of failure, we have developed a redundancy system based on a 2 x 3-phase BLDC motor and two control electronics. In the normal state, the two control electronics share the load, while maintaining galvanic isolation between them. In an emergency, the entire system is designed in such a way that the overall performance can be maintained if one winding or one of the control electronics fails. In addition, we have redundantly stored safety-relevant algorithms for controlling the motor.
Critical system states are also detected and documented in good time (predictive maintenance).
In a given environment and during a given mission numerous events can occur that result in a catastrophic failure of the entire system. Our redundancy system detects these processes and intervenes. Thus, our internal redundancy system improves the reliability of your products:
- Power amplifier fails – redundant ECU takes over
- Current measurement fails – redundant ECU takes over
- Voltage measurement fails – redundant ECU takes over
- Motor phase break – full performance
- Communication failure – full control, not just failsafe mode
Redundancy is the key to safer products!
Visit us at European Rotors 2023 at booth number 314 or on www.sobek-group.de and discover our products and services.
