Research on Latching Current Limiter Circuit of Aerospace Power System

Abstract

The input terminal of the aerospace power system is connected with surge suppression and overcurrent protection circuits. However, prior art methods have many demerits such as complex circuits, high surge currents, and slow response of overcurrent protection. Hence, this paper proposes a novel latching current limiter (LCL) circuit with both surge suppression and over-current protection functions. When over-current occurs, the circuit snap into the current limiting state within the adjustable time-delay period. When the over-current fault despairs during the time-delay period, the LCL circuit turns into the output lock state and rapidly lock down the output bus wire. Theoretical analysis of LCL circuit including the three operation states (i.e., the normal operation state, current limiting state and output lock state) and basic circuit equation derivation have been carried out. And the experimental platform is set up to validate the superior performance of the proposed LCL circuit. Results show that the proposed LCL circuit can effectively suppress the inrush current and sensitively respond the over-current fault of dc-link bus wire.