Fault-tolerance wide voltage conversion gain DC/DC converter for more electric aircraft

In this paper,a fault-tolerance wide voltage conversion gain DC/DC converter for More Electric Aircraft(MEA)is proposed.The proposed converter consists of a basic Cuk converter module and n expandable units.By adjusting the operation state of the expandable units,the voltage conversion gain of the proposed converter could be regulated,which makes it available for wide voltage conversion applications.Especially,since mutual redundancy can be realized between the basic Cuk converter module and the expandable units,the converter can continuously work when an unpredictable fault occurs to the fault-tolerant parts of the proposed converter,which reflects the fault tolerance of the converter and significantly improves the reliability of the system.Moreover,the advantages of small input current ripple,automatic current sharing and low voltage stress are also integrated in this converter.The working principle and features of the proposed converter are mainly introduced,and an experimental prototype with 800 W output power has been manufactured to verify the practicability and availability of the proposed converter.

Architecture Optimization of More Electric Aircraft Actuation System

The optional types of power source and actuator in the aircraft are more and more diverse due to fast development in more electric technology, which makes the combinations of different power sources and actuators become extremely complex in the architecture optimization process of airborne actuation system. The traditional ＂trial and error＂ method cannot satisfy the design demands. In this paper, firstly, the composition of more electric aircraft （MEA） flight control actuation system （FCAS） is introduced, and the possible architecture quantity is calculated. Secondly, the evaluation criteria of FCAS architecture with respect to safe reliability, weight and efficiency are proposed, and the evaluation criteria values are calculated in the case that each control surface adopts the same actuator configuration. Finally, the optimization results of MEA FCAS architecture are obtained by applying genetic algorithm （GA）. Compared to the traditional actuation system architecture, which only adopts servo valve controlled hydraulic actuators, the weight of the optimized more electric actuation system architecture can be reduced by 6%, and the efficiency can be improved by 30% based on the safe reliability requirements.

Multi-level virtual prototyping of electromechanical actuation system for more electric aircraft

Electromechanical actuators（EMAs） are becoming increasingly attractive in the field of more electric aircraft because of their outstanding benefits, which include reduced fuel burn and maintenance cost, enhanced system flexibility, and improved management of fault detection and isolation. However, electromechanical actuation raises specific issues when being used for safetycritical aerospace applications like flight controls： huge reflected inertia to load, jamming-type failure, and increase of backlash with service due to wear and local dissipation of heat losses for thermal balance. This study proposes an incremental approach for virtual prototyping of EMAs. It is driven by a model-based system engineering process in order to enable simulation-aided design.Best practices supported by Bond graph formalism are suggested to develop a model＇s structure efficiently and to make the model ready for use（or extension） by addressing the above mentioned issues. Physical effects are progressively introduced, and the realism of lumped-parameter models is increased step-by-step. In particular, multi-level component models are architected to ensure continuity between engineering activities. The models are implemented in the AMESim simulation environment, and simulation responses are given to illustrate how they can be used for preliminary sizing, control design, thermal balance verification, and faults to failure analysis. The proposed best practices intend to provide engineers with fast, reusable, and efficient means to assess performance virtually and enhance maturity, performance, and robustness.

A novel integrated self-powered brake system for more electric aircraft

Traditional hydraulic brake systems require a complex system of pipelines between an aircraft engine driven pump（EDP） and brake actuators, which increases the weight of the aircraft and may even cause serious vibration and leakage problems. In order to improve the reliability and safety of more electric aircraft（MEA）, this paper proposes a new integrated self-powered brake system（ISBS） for MEA. It uses a hydraulic pump geared to the main wheel to recover a small part of the kinetic energy of a landing aircraft. The recovered energy then serves as the hydraulic power supply for brake actuators. It does not require additional hydraulic source, thus removing the pipelines between an EDP and brake actuators. In addition, its self-powered characteristic makes it possible to brake as usual even in an emergency situation when the airborne power is lost. This paper introduces the working principle of the ISBS and presents a prototype. The mathematical models of a taxiing aircraft and the ISBS are established. A feedback linearization control algorithm is designed to fulfill the anti-skid control. Simulations are carried out to verify the feasibility of the ISBS, and experiments are conducted on a ground inertia brake test bench. The ISBS presents a good performance and provides a new potential solution in the field of brake systems for MEA.

Review on signal-by-wire and power-by-wire actuation for more electric aircraft

The huge and rapid progress in electric drives offers new opportunities to improve the performances of aircraft at all levels：fuel burn,environmental footprint,safety,integration and production,serviceability,and maintainability.Actuation for safety-critical applications like flight-controls,landing gears,and even engines is one of the major consumers of non-propulsive power.Conventional actuation with centralized hydraulic power generation and distribution and control of power by throttling has been well established for decades,but offers a limited potential of evolution.In this context,electric drives become more and more attractive to remove the natural drawbacks of conventional actuation and to offer new opportunities for improving performance.This paper takes the stock,at both the signal and power levels,of the evolution of actuation for safety-critical applications in aerospace.It focuses on the recent advances and the remaining challenges to be taken toward full electrical actuation for commercial and military aircraft,helicopters,and launchers.It logically starts by emphasizing the specificity of safety-critical actuation for aerospace.The following section addresses in details the evolution of aerospace actuation from mechanically-signaled and hydraulically-supplied to all electric,with special emphasis on research and development programs and on solutions entered into service.Finally,the last section reviews the challenges to be taken to generalize the use of all-electric actuators for future aircraft programs.

Overview and Development of Variable Frequency AC Generators for More Electric Aircraft Generation System

With the development of more electric aircraft(MEA),higher demands for electrical energy are put forward in generation systems.Compared to constant frequency AC(CFAC)generation systems,the constant speed drive(CSD)is eliminated and integrated starter/generator(SG)can be realized in variable frequency AC(VFAC)generation systems.In this paper,an overview of VFAC generators for safety-critical aircraft applications is presented,with a particular focus on the key features and requirements of candidate generators and the starting control strategies.Wound rotor synchronous machines(WRSMs)are typical generators used in VFAC generation systems so far.Meanwhile,hybrid excitation synchronous machines(HESMs)and cage-type induction machines are promising candidates for VFAC generation systems.The generation operation of WRSM is relatively mature,however,the SG technology of WRSM is still full of challenges.As one of the most important issues,the starting excitation methods of WRSM are summarized.An HESM-based VFAC SG system is proposed and developed in this paper.The experimental results show that the starting mode,transition mode and generating mode of the VFAC SG system are realized.The continuous progress of VFAC generation system makes great contributions to the realization of MEA.

Modeling and Simulation of Electrical System in More Electric Civil Aircraft Considering Faults

Based on the integrated design and airworthiness verification of civil aircraft system,this paper completes the simulation modeling and fault modeling of aircraft electrical system. The aircraft electrical system is constructed in the form of dual generators and dual-channel power supply. The main power supply adopts the three-stage power generation system,the auxiliary power supply system uses the permanent magnet synchronous power generation system and a battery. The transmission and distribution system is responsible for the electrical power conversion and the logic control in the system fault-pattern. The simulation results show that the system is reasonable and effective,which provides a reference for the optimal design and control of the actual aircraft electrical system.

Investigation of Nonlinear PI Multi-loop Control Strategy for Aircraft HVDC Generator System with Wound Rotor Synchronous Machine

In order to enhance the transient performance of aircraft high voltage DC(HVDC)generation system with wound rotor synchronous machine(WRSM)under a wide speed range,the nonlinear PI multi-loop control strategy is proposed in this paper.Traditional voltage control method is hard to achieve the dynamic performance requirements of the HVDC generation system under a wide speed range,so the nonlinear PI parameter adjustment,load current feedback and speed feedback are added to the voltage and excitation current double loop control.The transfer function of the HVDC generation system is derived,and the relationship between speed,load current and PI parameters is obtained.The PI parameters corresponding to the load at certain speed are used to shorten the adjusting time when the load suddenly changes.The dynamic responses in transient processes are analyzed by experiment.The results illustrate that the WRSM HVDC generator system with this method has better dynamic performance.

Modularity Techniques in High Performance Permanent Magnet Machines and Applications

This paper reviews the modularity techniques in the stator manufacture of permanent magnet machines for different applications.Some basic concepts of modular machines are firstly introduced.Modular machines for several typical applications are then described in details,including domestic appliances,automobiles and electric vehicles,more electric aircrafts and civic applications,wind power generators,etc.Besides,the influence of manufacture tolerance gaps and flux barriers on the electromagnetic performance is discussed.

Design and application of an Electric Tail Rotor Drive Control(ETRDC) for helicopters with performance tests

With the development of electric helicopters’ motor technology and the widespread use of electric drive rotors, more aircraft use electric rotors to provide thrust and directional control.For a helicopter tail rotor, the wake of the main rotor influences the tail rotor’s inflow and wake.In the procedure of controlling, crosswind will also cause changes to the tail disk load. This paper describes requirements and design principles of an electric motor drive and variable pitch tail rotor system. A particular spoke-type architecture of the motor is designed, and the performance of blades is analyzed by the CFD method. The demand for simplicity of moving parts and strict constraints on the weight of a helicopter makes the design of electrical and mechanical components challenging. Different solutions have been investigated to propose an effective alternative to the mechanical actuation system. A test platform is constructed which can collect the dynamic response of the thrust control. The enhancement of the response speed due to an individual motor speed control and variable-pitch system is validated.

Flow characteristics of integrated motor-pump assembly with phosphate ester medium for aerospace electro-hydrostatic actuators

Motor-pump assembly is the core component of the Aerospace Electro-hydrostatic Actuator(EHA).Thus,the design of the motor pump can be very challenging under conditions of high speed and wide pressure range,especially in particular working mediums.Our ultimate goal is to pursue better flow characteristics under a wide range of working conditions.In this paper,we built a sub-model of the main friction interfaces and a model of single-shaft coaxial motor-pump assembly adopting the method of hierarchical modeling.The experimental investigation of the output characteristics was mainly carried out in a phosphate ester medium environment.Then,the flow characteristics were compared and analyzed with the simulation results.Results indicated that the flow characteristics of the motor-pump assembly could be accurately simulated by the model and quite severe in a low speed and high-pressure environment.

Modelling and simulation of flight control electromechanical actuators with special focus on model architecting, multidisciplinary effects and power flows

In the aerospace field, electromechanical actuators are increasingly being implemented in place of conventional hydraulic actuators. For safety-critical embedded actuation applications like flight controls, the use of electromechanical actuators introduces specific issues related to thermal balance, reflected inertia, parasitic motion due to compliance and response to failure. Unfortunately, the physical effects governing the actuator behaviour are multidisciplinary, coupled and nonlinear. Although numerous multi-domain and system-level simulation packages are now available on the market, these effects are rarely addressed as a whole because of a lack of scientific approaches for model architecting, multi-purpose incremental modelling and judicious model implementation. In this publication, virtual prototyping of electromechanical actuators is addressed using the Bond-Graph formalism. New approaches are proposed to enable incremental modelling,thermal balance analysis, response to free-run or jamming faults, impact of compliance on parasitic motion, and influence of temperature. A special focus is placed on friction and compliance of the mechanical transmission with fault injection and temperature dependence. Aileron actuation is used to highlight the proposals for control design, energy consumption and thermal analysis, power network pollution analysis and fault response.

A fast arc fault detection method for AC solid state power controllers in MEA

Arc fault detection is desperately required in Solid State Power Controllers（SSPC） in addition to their fundamental functions because arcs will provoke growing harm and threat to aircraft safety. Experimental study has been done to obtain the faulted current data. In order to improve the detection speed and accuracy, two fast arc fault detection methods have been proposed in this paper with the analysis of only half cycle data. Both Fast Fourier Transform（FFT） and Wavelet Packets Decomposition（WPD） have been adopted to distinguish arc fault currents from normal operation currents. Analysis results show that Alternating Current（AC） arcs can be effectively and accurately detected with the proposed half cycle data based methods. Moreover,experimental verification results have also been provided.

Dynamic thermal coupling modeling and analysis of wet electro-hydrostatic actuator

The electro-hydrostatic actuator(EHA)used in more electric aircraft(MEA)has been extensively studied due to its advantages of high reliability and high integration.However,this high integration results in a small heat dissipation area,leading to high-temperature problems.Generally,to reduce the temperature,a wet cooling method of using the pump leakage oil to cool the motor is adopted,which can also increase the difficulty of accurately predicting the system temperature in the early design stage.To solve this problem,a dynamic coupling thermal model of a wet EHA is proposed in this paper.In particular,the leakage oil of the pump is used as a coupling item between the electrical system and the hydraulic system.Then,an improved T-equivalent block model is proposed to address the uneven distribution of axial oil temperature inside the motor,and the control node method is applied to hydraulic system thermal modeling.Meanwhile,a dynamic coupling thermal model is developed that enables a dynamic evaluation of the wet EHA temperature.Then,experimental prototypes of wet motor and wet EHA are developed,while the temperature response of the wet motor at different rotation speeds and different loads and the temperature response of the wet EHA at no-load condition were verified experimentally at room temperature,respectively.The maximum temperature difference between the experimental and theoretical results of the wet motor as well as the experimental and theoretical results of the wet EHA is less than 8℃.These test results indicate that the dynamic coupling thermal model is valid and demonstrate that the thermal coupling modeling method proposed in this paper can provide a basis for the detailed thermal design of EHA.