Conference Agenda

This article explores the aeronautical perspectives of electrical energy transport with a short-term outlook. A comprehensive analysis of onboard electrical energy novelties will be conducted, addressing the challenges posed by electric and hybrid propulsion in the aviation sector. Particular attention will be given to electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) issues, emphasizing their critical role at the harness level within the overall electrical system. This focus underlines the necessity of considering EMC to successfully achieve the development of hybrid or fully electric aircraft.

Designing power electronic (PE) circuits involves addressing the influence of parasitic elements already during the simulation phases. However, a challenge lies in a priori estimating those and understanding their influence with respect to key design objects. To enhance the performance and reliability of such circuits, sensitivity analysis (SA) can be employed to examine how input parameters affect output characteristics in different domains, including electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) thermal management, or power efficiency. This paper explores the application of SA, through computation of Cotter indices, to a three-level passive neutral-point-clamped (PNPC) inverter intended for aerospace applications. We perform SA on common mode (CM), differential mode (DM) voltage, and power losses in three different sections of the system. We show that among 82 input parameters, one can identify 10 most influential parameters to guide design efforts in finding optima in the multi-domain design space of electromagnetic interference (EMI) and thermal management.

This paper presents an integrated approach to EMI filter design for high-speed inverter drives in All Electric Aircraft (AEA) applications. Where traditional Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) filter design methodologies primarily focus on Conducted Emission (CE), this study incorporates lightning and inrush current requirements from DO-160G/ED-14G standards. Thus the performance is evaluated in time and frequency domain. This impacts the overall EMI filter design. Two filters were designed and analyzed: one following only CE design, the other incorporating lightning and inrush. Both were evaluated through simulation, showing comparable Insertion Loss (IL). However, the proposed design demonstrated a better transient mitigation due to a higher impedance input stage. Integrating lightning and inrush current effects early in the filter design process can lead to more compact solutions for aerospace applications, compared to traditional methods that consider those on the system level.

The implementation of high voltage direct current power distribution networks in future hybrid electrical aircraft, will increase the risk of arcing. Apart from mitigation measures in the cabling and power electronics themselves, inductive sensors are developed to detect serial arcing based on high-frequency behaviour of arc currents. This paper presents the model that will be used to analyse the physical phenomena behind arcing behaviour observed in experiments. A modified Mayr model that includes the effects of arc length is used in conjunction with differential equations that describe the other components in the circuit. Parameter analysis is performed to learn the impact of each parameter to the arcing behaviour. This enables the fitting of the arc model to get a very good match between simulated and measured arc currents and voltages. As a final step, stochastic variations in the arc length are included, to be able to simulate effects of fluctuating arc length in the arc currents and voltage.