Abstract
Aircraft technology moves towards electrification in order to achieve environmentally friendly goals. However, one of the main challenges facing the electrification of aircraft technology is the weight of the electric devices necessary for operating a fully electric aircraft. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) proposed the use of the superconductive technology in electric aircraft (EA) to overcome this challenge in addition to its other benefits. The proposed EA is called N3-X and it has an on-board DC superconducting network including a superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL). The SFCL is a self-mechanism device that very effectively limits the current within a few milliseconds, thus improving the stability of the system. As the grounding of this network is different from traditional networks, analysing the behaviour of different fault types and how to manage them becomes critical. In this paper, one set of the EA’s systems (one generator, AC/DC rectifier and four motors with their DC/AC variable frequency drives) has been modelled in MATLAB/Simulink environment to carry out the fault analysis and to demonstrate the effect of the SFCL on this network under different types of faults.
Highlights
As concerns regarding global warming and air pollution grows around the world, several organisations and companies started acting towards a healthier and cleaner environment
This paper investigated and analyzed the behavior of a proposed power system architecture of electric aircraft (EA) based on National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) N3-X during different fault current scenarios
The superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) responses were demonstrated to show the effectiveness of the SFCL on the system in each scenario
Summary
As concerns regarding global warming and air pollution grows around the world, several organisations and companies started acting towards a healthier and cleaner environment. Because the EA has an on-board compact electrical network with high fault current levels, this level of fault current, if not properly managed, may exceed the maximum ratings of the protection systems, such as switchgears or circuit breakers, and permanently damaging several devices such as generators, motors and cables via burnout. The metallic part of equipment is connected to the earth Because aluminum alloys are good conductors, the airframe can act as the traditional grounding (earth) which could be used as grounding, bonding, voltage reference and a current return path due to its high electrical conductivity, thereby reducing the number of wires on-board the aircraft by half [26]. For all results the circuit breakers do not trip, showcasing the performance of the SFCL device
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