Search Results

MIL-STD-704 defines power quality in terms of transient, steady-state, and frequency-domain metrics that are applicable throughout a military aircraft electric power system. Maintaining power quality in more electric aircraft power systems has become more challenging in recent years due to the increase in load dynamics and power levels in addition to stricter requirements of power system characteristics during a variety of operating conditions. Further, power quality is often difficult to assess directly during experiments and aircraft operation or during data post-processing for the integrated electric power system (including sources, distribution, and loads). While MIL-STD-704 provides guidelines for compliance testing of electric load equipment, it does not provide any instruction on how to assess the power quality of power sources or the integrated power system itself, except the fact that power quality must be satisfied throughout all considered operating conditions.

The diverse and complex requirements of next-generation energy optimized aircraft (EOA) demand detailed transient and dynamic model-based design (MBD) to ensure the proper operation of numerous interconnected and interacting subsystems. In support of the U.S. Air Force's Integrated Vehicle Energy Technology (INVENT) program, several software tools have been developed and are in use that aid in the efficient MBD of next-generation EOA. Among these are subsystem model libraries, automated subsystem model verification test scripts, a distributed co-simulation application, and tools for system configuration, EOA mission building, data logging, plotting, post-processing, and visualization, and energy flow analysis. Herein, each of these tools is described. A detailed discussion of each tool's functionality and its benefits with respect to the goal of achieving successful integrated system simulations in support of MBD of EOA is given.

A sudden short-circuit (SSC) laboratory test of an electric machine is a commonly used procedure to estimate model parameters that accurately represent the dynamic response of the machine. While the graphical interpretation of the short-circuit current is often discussed in great detail, the numerical methods used to determine the solution for the machine parameter estimation is a challenging proposition. In this paper, the authors present an integral regression technique to fit the characteristic equation of the short-circuit current to a curve that is composed of exponential decays that trail off to an unknown steady-state value in the presence of noise. The proposed estimation method is applied to laboratory data from an aerospace synchronous machine.

Recent turbine engine numerical modeling developments have significantly improved the capability to accomplish integrated system-level analyses of aircraft thermal, power, propulsion, and vehicle systems. Combining desired aircraft performance with thermal management challenges of modern aircraft, which include increased heat loads from components such as avionics and more-electric accessories, as well as maintaining engine components at specified operating temperatures, demands we look for solutions that maximize heat sink capacity while minimizing adverse impacts on engine and aircraft performance. Development of optimized aircraft thermal management architectures requires the capability to directly analyze the impact of thermal management components, such as heat exchangers, on engine performance. This paper presents a process to evaluate the impact of heat exchanger design and performance characteristics (e.g., volume and pressure drops) on engine performance.

The diverse and complex requirements of next-generation energy optimized aircraft (EOA) demand detailed transient and dynamic model-based design (MBD) to ensure the proper operation of numerous interconnected and interacting subsystems across multiple disciplines. In support of the U.S. Air Force's Integrated Vehicle Energy Technology (INVENT) program, several MBD-derived software tools, including models of EOA technologies, have been developed. To validate these models and demonstrate the performance of EOA technologies, a series of Integrated Ground Demonstration (IGD) hardware tests are planned. Several of the numerous EOA software tools and MBD-based processes have been updated and adapted to support this activity.

A reduced order dynamic aircraft model has been created for the purpose of enabling constructive simulation studies involving integrated thermal management subsystems. Such studies are motivated by the increasing impact of on-board power and thermal subsystems to the overall performance and mission effectiveness of modern aircraft. Previous higher-order models that have been used for this purpose have the drawbacks of much higher development time, along with much higher execution times in the simulation studies. The new formulation allows for climbs, accelerations and turns without incurring computationally expensive stability considerations; a dynamic inversion control law provides tracking of user-specified mission data. To assess the trade-off of improved run-time performance against model capability, the reduced order formulation is compared to a traditional six degree-of-freedom model of the same air vehicle.

Minimizing energy use on more electric aircraft (MEA) requires examining in detail the important decision of whether and when to use engine bleed air, ram air, electric, hydraulic, or other sources of power. Further, due to the large variance in mission segments, it is unlikely that a single energy source is the most efficient over an entire mission. Thus, hybrid combinations of sources must be considered. An important system in an advanced MEA is the adaptive power and thermal management system (APTMS), which is designed to provide main engine start, auxiliary and emergency power, and vehicle thermal management including environmental cooling. Additionally, peak and regenerative power management capabilities can be achieved with appropriate control. The APTMS is intended to be adaptive, adjusting its operation in order to serve its function in the most efficient and least costly way to the aircraft as a whole.