Abstract
The more-electric aircraft (MEA) concept has become a major trend due to its multiple advantages. Many functions which are conventionally driven by pneumatic, hydraulic and mechanical power systems are replaced by electrical ones onboard MEA. This results in increased electrical power demand for MEA. Due to power off-take limit from high-pressure (HP) spool of an engine, extra power needs to be extracted from the low-pressure (LP) spool. Besides, recent studies have revealed that transferring power between LP and HP shafts in certain flight missions, like taxiing and descending will not only decrease fuel consumption but also increase compressor surge margins. This paper introduces an enhanced power generation centre for the MEA applications. It extracts power from both HP and LP spools, with each shaft is driving one electrical generator. These generators supply electrical power to a common DC bus through active AC/DC converters. Using the droop-control concept, the power sharing between LP and HP shafts can be smoothly controlled. Control method when power transferred from LP spool to HP spool is also presented. This architecture is built and simulated in the Matlab/Simulink environment. Simulations results including performances of electrical machines, power converters and engine under different scenarios are presented in this paper.
Highlights
During the past decades, great progress has been made towards more electric aircraft (MEA) due to advantages like reduced CO2 and NOx emission, decreased fuel consumption, low maintenance cost and etc. [1,2,3]
This paper introduces a concept of enhanced power generation centre and the power transfer control between different sources within the centre
An inverter controlled permanent magnet machines (PMMs) performs as a constant power load (CPL) which is connected to the main DC bus
Summary
Great progress has been made towards more electric aircraft (MEA) due to advantages like reduced CO2 and NOx emission, decreased fuel consumption, low maintenance cost and etc. [1,2,3]. If the power extracted is over the limit, the engine will surge and stall This issue can be addressed either by increasing the speed of HP shaft or bypass excess air to fan discharge duct, whereas those measurements will increase the fuel consumption and lead to fuel waste [10]. Another way to extract more power is to take power from LP shaft, and this will lead to a multi-source power generation system within the engine. While by adopting the EPGC in Fig., some power of LP shaft can be transferred to HP shaft by controlling HP SG in motoring mode to speed up the HP shaft This will improve fuel efficiency, and increase compressor surge margin.
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