Search Results

This paper focuses on advances in active power converter topologies for power quality solutions for More Electric Aircraft (MEA). Advancements in power electronics encompass many technologies including power semiconductors, microprocessors or digital signal processors (DSPs), and component packaging. Hence, active power electronic solutions are becoming more attractive from the perspective of weight, volume, performance and cost. A particular contribution that leads to these advancements is the feasibility of implementing the robust control topologies using faster processors. In this paper various active topologies are reviewed, but a particular emphasis is given to a novel control topology for an active filtering technique where an overall reduction of current harmonics of an aircraft power distribution system can be achieved at the system level rather than at the Line Replaceable Unit (LRU) level.

In this paper, various active and passive configurations for a rectification system that minimize the characteristic harmonics of the input phase current waveform and achieve compliance with the harmonic current specifications for future more electric aircraft will be presented. The passive topologies involve multi-pulse transformer rectification systems while the active topologies look into active rectification. These rectification systems are to be used for the ac-to-dc conversion that comprises the first stage of the ac-to-ac conversion for applications such as motor drives in aircraft systems. Particular emphasis is given to a novel topology called Reduced Switching Element Matrix Inverter (RESEMI) which performs the ac-to-ac conversion with fewer switches than the matrix converters. The paper also presents system level solutions and compares qualitatively selected topologies.