•Structure establishing of EHP.•System modeling and simulating.•Experiments on prototype. Electro-hydraulic pumps (EHP) possess the advantages of integrated structure and high working efficiency, which thereby attract widespread attention. For the purpose of airborne deployment, an axial piston pump based EHP is established in this work. The modeling of the EHP is carried out in detail considering its structure and working principle via AMESim. Specifically, the model is performed on the basis of three aspects, which are electromagnetic driving, mechanical transmission and fluid dynamic. The computational simulation is conducted based on the modeling. Further, the prototype is designed and machined for working performance evaluation. The properties under different configurations of the EHP are investigated by experiments. Experimental results indicate that the proposed EHP provides a decent working performance in line with the modeling and simulating. The effectiveness of the EHP is verified and the scheme for further improvement is presented.