In the context of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Cleansky2 project, Dassault Aviation, a french aeronautics company uses DEPS and DEPS Studio for modeling and solving the problem of the design of a safe on-board aircraft electrical management and distribution system architecture.


An aircraft electrical power generation and distribution embedded system consists of:
– a physical architecture composed of a set of power generators (propulsion and rat), an electrical power transport topology (contactors and bus bars)
– an IT architecture composed of a set of microcontrollers for controlling the contactors and a set of control software.
be integrated into the aircraft’s electrical power distribution system.
The problem to be represented and solved is as follows:
For a given physical architecture, design the IT architecture so that it is robust in different system operating modes:
– Normal mode, in which all bus bars must be powered.
– Single failure mode, in which all bus bars must continue to be powered in the event of a single failure.
– Dual failure mode, in which certain bus bars must continue to be powered in the case of double failure.
– Ultimate emergency mode, in which only the RAT is active in the aircraft.
References
[1] L. Zimmer, P.A. Yvars, Synthesis of software architecture for the control of embedded electrical generation and distribution system for aircraft under safety constraints: The case of simple failures, proc of the 14th International Conference of Industrial Engineering, CIGI-QUALITA 2021, Grenoble, France