Power Drive Electronics Reliability in More Electric Aircraft

Abstract

This paper presents an ‘Integrated Reliability Paradigm’ for a composite reliability assessment of power devices and the power systems they build, when arranged in networks, for power conversion, inversion, and switching functions. Especially, in times when the traditional aircraft architecture is transforming into more electric aircraft (MEA) configuration, the need for an integrated approach that evaluates the reliability from device up to the system level has become all-important. The proposed integrated reliability paradigm realizes this need by devising an efficient framework that provides tools for modelling and evaluating the reliability of power drive electronics to ensure highly dependable power systems/sub-systems onboard MEA. The paradigm is validated on an electro-mechanical actuator (EMA) of the electric braking sub-system of the main landing gear.