TESTING of the ENGINEERING MODEL ELECTRICAL POWER CONTROL UNIT for the FLUIDS and COMBUSTION FACILITY 1999-01-2435
The John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field (GRC) in Cleveland, OH and the Sundstrand Corporation in Rockford, IL have designed and developed an Engineering Model (EM) Electrical Power Control Unit (EPCU) for the Fluids Combustion Facility (FCF) experiments to be flown on the International Space Station (ISS). The EPCU will be used as the power interface to the ISS power distribution system for the FCF’s space experiments’ test and telemetry hardware. Furthermore, it is proposed to be the common power interface for all experiments.
The EPCU is a three kilowatt 120Vdc-to-28Vdc converter utilizing three independent Power Converter Units (PCUs), each rated at 1kWe (36Adc @ 28Vdc) which are paralleled and synchronized. Each converter may be fed from one of two ISS power channels. The 28Vdc loads are connected to the EPCU output via 48 solid-state and current-limiting switches, rated at 4Adc each. These switches may be paralleled to supply any given load up to the 108Adc normal operational limit of the paralleled converters. The EPCU was designed in this manner to maximize allocated-power utilization, to shed loads autonomously, to provide fault tolerance, and to provide a flexible power converter and control module to meet various ISS load demands.
Tests of the EPCU in the Power Systems Facility test-bed at GRC reveal that the overall converted-power efficiency is approximately 89%--with a nominal-input voltage of 120Vdc and a total load in the range of 40% to 110% rated 28Vdc load. (The PCUs alone have an efficiency of approximately 94.5%.) Furthermore, the EM unit passed all flight-qualification level (and beyond) vibration tests, passed ISS EMI (conducted, radiated, and susceptibility) requirements, successfully operated for extended periods in a thermal/vacuum chamber, was integrated with a proto-flight experiment, and passed all stability and functional requirements. Because of paper length limitations, this report will only overview key tests.
Citation: Kimnach, G., Lebron, R., and Fox, D., "TESTING of the ENGINEERING MODEL ELECTRICAL POWER CONTROL UNIT for the FLUIDS and COMBUSTION FACILITY," SAE Technical Paper 1999-01-2435, 1999, https://doi.org/10.4271/1999-01-2435. Download Citation
Author(s):
Greg L. Kimnach, Ramon Lebron, David Fox
Affiliated:
NASA John H.Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field
Pages: 9
Event:
34th Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference
ISSN:
0148-7191
e-ISSN:
2688-3627
Related Topics:
Electric power
Spacecraft
Combustion and combustion processes
Switches
Logistics
Technical review
Telemetry
Hardware
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