Srikanth Tejavath 07020413 I.D.D.

4th Year

The function of the Aircraft electrical system is to generate, regulate and distribute electrical power throughout the aircraft. New-generation aircrafts rely heavily on electrical power because of the wide use of electronic flight instrument systems. Aircraft electrical power is used to operate: Aircraft Flight Instruments Essential Systems Passenger Services

Essential power is power that the aircraft needs to be able to continue safe operation. Passenger services power is the power that used for: Operation of entertainment systems Cabin lighting Preparation of food

AC motor drive applications for a VF aircraft

There are sever different power sources on large aircraft to be able to handle excessive loads, for redundancy, and for emergency situations. These power sources include: Engine driven AC generators Auxiliary Power Units External power Ram Air Turbines

Aircraft electrical components operate on many different voltages both AC and DC The primary electric power in most large commercial aircraft is provided by 3-phase 115VAC power at 400Hz constant frequency. The TRU converters 115VAC power to 28VDC power for the DC loads. 26 VAC is also used in some aircraft for lighting

The purpose of the Constant Speed Drive (CSD) is to take rotational power from the engine and, no matter the engine speed, turn the generator at a constant speed This is necessary because the generator output must be 400Hz CSD Operation The engine turns the CSD which uses a differential assembly and hydraulic pumps to turn the generator

CF EPS Architecture

It can be seen that, the CFG generates CF AC power for the AC loads. Then, TRU converters 115VAC power to 28VDC power for the DC loads. The CF EPS architecture is very simple that it contains only two types of power and only AC/DC converters are used.

The VFG generates high voltage VF AC power first. Then, different power electronic converters are used to receive low voltage AC power and DC power

These powers will be applied to the suitable loads to obtain the best performance and efficiency.

The AC/DC conversion has traditionally been performed by uncontrolled diode rectification circuits. Despite their high reliability, relatively high efficiency, and low cost, diode rectifiers generate large amount of harmonic currents and have very poor input power factor. In order to reduce the harmonic and improve the power factor, multiphase (12- or 18-pulse) transformer-rectifier unit (TRU) is proposed

It contains two transformers and two rectifier bridges. In order to obtain lower harmonic and higher power factor ,it can be done by increasing the number of the transformer and rectifier in the TRU. In order to reduce the power loss and weight, the traditional 115VAC and 28VDC in CF EPS are replaced by multiple types of AC and DC power in VF EPS The 115VAC and 28VDC voltage types are traditional, while the 235VAC and the 270VDC voltage types are the consequence of the MEA architecture that results in a greatly expanded electrical system generating twice as much electricity as previous airplane models

The disadvantages of bigger size and weight of TRU are obvious. As a result, Auto-transformer-rectifier unit (ATRU) is proposed. It can be seen that the conventional transformer is replaced by a self coupling transformer. As a result, ATRU can obtain better performance with lower weight and size than TRU.

Transformer Rectifier Units (TRUs) are utilized to 115 VAC, 400Hz into 28 VDC. A transformer is used to reduce the voltage from 115 volts to 28 volts.

At this point the 28 volts is still AC current. To change the current from AC to DC, a rectifier is used.
Each aircraft AC bus feeds a TRU which feeds a DC bus

A/C wild means that the alternating current that is frequency wild, meaning as the generator speeds up or slows down, the frequency of the a/c actually changes. Cycloconverters are used in high power applications and are usually phase-controlled and they traditionally use thyristors due to their ease of phase commutation. (1-1) Cycloconverter (3-1) Cycloconverter

There are other newer forms of cycloconversion such as ac-ac matrix converters and high frequency ac-ac converters.
High frequency ac link converter:

Every half-cycle of the input signal, the control for each phase decides if it needs a positive pulse or a negative pulse using integral pulse modulation. For IPM, the command signal and the output phase voltage are integrated and the latter result is subtracted from the former.

This cycloconverter converts the single-phase high frequency sinusoidal or square wave voltage into three-phase voltages using the phase control principles. The voltage command is compared to a saw tooth waveform to find the firing instant of the switches. Depending on the polarity of the current and the input voltage, the next switch to be turned on is determined. Compared to the previous one, this converter has more complex control but it can work at any frequency.

One essential part of the power distribution system, AC/DC converters which are connected to a variable frequency AC bus are employed for supplying power for all kinds of DC loads Nominal 28 and 42 V dc.

Mode 1
With S2 on and S1 is modulated by reference Ta, current flows in phase (a) and phase (b). Ia>0 and Ib <0, The bridge output voltage VL is connected to main line supply Vab which opposed by VDC is applied across the inductor. Current IL increases in the inductor IL = Ia = -Ib VL = Vab Where Ta = TM sin (t+) Mode 2 With S2 on and S3 is modulated by Tb, current flows in phase (c) and phase (b). Ic>0 and Ib <0. Line voltage Vcb opposed by VDC is applied across the inductor. Again the inductor current increases. IL = Ic = -Ib VL = Vcb

Mode 3 In this mode, only one MOSFET is on (S2), the inductor current freewheels and the converter is disconnected from the mains and the DC voltage is zero. The outer voltage controller regulates the DC link voltage. The error signal is used as input for the PI voltage controller this provides a reference to the D current of the inner current controller. The Q reference is set to zero to give unity power factor.

This consists of power converter that actively rectifies a portion of the variable frequency supply to produce a stable 42 DC voltage The 3-phase/dc converter is a controlled current circuit which relies on pulse width modulation of a constant current to achieve low distortion

long cables which may run along part of the wing it can be in excess of 200 ft., which may have an inductance in excess of 30 H .This inductance could be used as part of the input filter
The Ac side filter is arranged to bypass the commutating energy of MOSFETs and to absorb the harmonic for the high frequency switching. At the DC side, the inductor is used to maintain a constant current

The aircrafts nickel cadmium battery is final source of backup power. The battery provides 28 VDC. It is also possible to change the 28 VDC into 115 VAC 400Hz with the use of a static inverter. When using the battery, power usage is limited by the short life of the battery .

Higher than usual frequencies, such as 400 Hz, offer several advantages over 60 Hz notably in allowing smaller, lighter power supplies to be used for military hardware, commercial aircraft operations and computer applications. As aircraft space is at a premium and weight is critical to aircraft engine thrust and fuel burn (and thus the aircraft range and engine horsepower per pound), 115 volts at 400 Hz offers a distinct advantage and is much better than the usual 60 Hz used in utility power generation

The choice of capacitors. Firstly, for the DC side filter, electrolyte capacitors are not allowed to be used in the aircraft power system due to: 1) Life time. 2) Capacitor Series resistance.

In order to achieve good lifetime and low series resistance, ceramic capacitors are Recommended. On the other hand with a rating of few hundred volts this type of capacitor has a very small value per unit (up to 20uF per unit). Therefore in order to provide a capacitance of 500 uF, the weight will be 2kgapproximately.

According to ISO-1540 the recently proposed limitation for input harmonic current distortion virtually disqualifies most existing AC drive products that are currently available in the industrial market. The limits for total harmonic current distortion (THD) are 12% for 12-pulserectifiers and 8% for all other loads. The highest order of harmonic limited is the 40th for both CF and VF systems, while ISO-1540 limits apply to harmonics under 25 kHz in CF systems and 50 kHz in VF systems.

Power Factor Challenges:

The requirements of steady-state full load power factor of motor loads given as

The high line fundamental frequency (400 Hz in CF EPS and 360800 Hz in VF EPS) is a big challenge for the PFC to meet airborne power quality requirements.

1) Weimer J.A.: Power Management and Distribution for More Electric Aircraft, Proceeding of the 30thIntersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference, 1995. 2) Quigley, R. E., More Electric Aircraft, Proc. of IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conf., March 1993. 3)M H Taha, Active rectifier using DQ vector control for aircraft power system, IEMDC 2007. 4)Taha M. H.: Mitigation of Supply Current Distortion in 3- Phase /DC Boost converters For Aircraft Applications, PEMD 2008

5)Jie Chang, T. Sun and A. Wang, Multi-function, low-weight and compact power converters for aircraft power system applications, SAE Trans. Journal of Aerospace, 2003. 6)Jie Chang, etc., Experimental development and evaluations of VF-input high-frequency AC-AC converter, IEEE Trans. on Power Electronics, Sep. 2004. 7)T. H. Barton, Rectifier, cycloconverters and AC controllers, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994.