Analysis and Design of Power Converter Topologies for Application in Future More Electric Aircraft

Since 1960, the worldwide air passenger traffic has been growing at an average yearly rate of 9% and it has been estimated that it will continue to grow with a 5–7% rate into the foreseeable future. One obvious reason for such growth is technological advances in aircraft system leading to improved aircraft-efficiency and reduced cost. However, with increased air traffic, the aircraft industries are also facing challenges in terms of \(\mathrm{CO}_{2}\) emission and safety [1]. Today, air transport is responsible for 2% of the total man made \(\mathrm{CO}_{2}\) emission which is estimated to increase further to 3% by 2050. In this regard, the Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe has set several goals to be achieved by 2020 including 50% reduction of \(\mathrm{CO}_{2}\) emissions; an 80% reduction of \(\mathrm{NO}_{X}\) emissions, and a 50% reduction of external noise [2, 3]. Thus, currently, the aircraft industries are driven by three major objectives - 1. improving emissions 2. improving fuel economy and, 3. reducing cost.

This chapter presents a novel matrix based non-isolated three phase AC–DC converter. The proposed converter topology provides large step down voltage gain than a traditional three phase PWM buck rectifier without compromising input power quality and power conversion efficiency. Section 2.2 presents the brief review of three phase non-isolated buck rectifiers. In Sect. 2.3, the new contributions of this chapter are discussed. Section 2.4 describes the topology, modulation scheme and principle of operation of the proposed converter in details. Steady state analysis and design are presented in Sect. 2.5 which includes voltage and current stress calculation on the semiconductor devices, accurate estimation of input and output voltage/current ripple, filter design and effect of modulation index on input current THD. In Sect. 2.6, digital simulation of the converter is carried out and results are discussed. In Sect. 2.7, small signal modeling followed by closed loop PI controller is presented for the proposed converter. A comparative evaluation of the proposed converter with the traditional six switch buck rectifier is carried out in Sect. 2.8. Subsequently, experimental results are presented in Sect. 2.9. Section 2.10 provides the conclusion.

In recent efforts of making aircraft more energy efficient, aircraft-industries are moving towards More Electric Aircraft (MEA). MEA offers several benefits compared to a conventional aircraft system including improved power transmission efficiency, reduced fuel consumption, lesser weight and reduced environmental impact. One of the enabling technologies for MEA is power electronic converter which is required to convert and condition the generated electric power for different aircraft loads (Rosero et al., IEEE Aerosp Electron Syst Mag, 22:3–9, 2007) [1], (Wheeler and Bozhko, IEEE Electrif Mag, 2:6–12, 2014) [2], (Sarlioglu and Morris, IEEE Trans Transp Electrif 1:54–64, 2015) [3].

In this chapter, a new matrix based non-isolated three phase buck-boost rectifier is proposed for aircraft application. Similar to the converter topologies presented in Chaps. 2 and 3, this topology uses matrix converter topology for three phase line frequency AC voltage to single phase high frequency AC voltage conversion. Being a buck-boost converter, the proposed converter provides wide range of the output voltage. The chapter is divided into seven sections. In Sect. 4.2, the brief review of the power converter for MEA is discussed. The new contributions of the chapter are highlighted in Sect. 4.3. Section 4.4 presents the topology and operation of the converter in details. In Sect. 4.5, the comprehensive steady state analysis and design of the converter are discussed. Comparative evaluation of the proposed converter with the boost-buck type of rectifier is discussed in Sect. 4.6. In Sect. 4.7, a scale down hardware prototype of the proposed converter is built and experimental test results are demonstrated to validate the theoretical claims. Section 4.8 provides the conclusion.

This chapter mainly focuses on analysis and design of HV resonant DC–DC converter for powering Traveling Wave Tube (TWT) in MPM based transmitters. Due to low weight/volume, MPM based transmitters are especially suited for smaller aircrafts such as UAVs for different applications including surveillance and navigational purposes. A brief review of HV DC–DC converter is given in Sect. 5.2. The new contribution of the chapter is highlighted in Sect. 5.3. In Sect. 5.4, the topology and operation of the proposed converter are discussed in details. The comprehensive steady state analysis and design of the converter are carried out in Sects. 5.5 and 5.6, respectively. The design of the converter is verified by simulation and experimental results in Sect. 5.7. Moreover, the Sect. 5.7 also presents the brief discussion on the power conversion efficiency and comparative evaluation of the two design methods- the proposed method and First Harmonic Approximation (FHA). Section 5.8 provides the conclusion.

This chapter concludes the thesis. Section 6.1 briefly relates the motivation and provides the conclusion on the work done in this thesis. Finally, the direction of future research is discussed in Sect. 6.2.