Smart multilevel Power conditioning for AeRonautical elecTricAl uNits

This proposal aims to develop and demonstrate a highly robust and reliable Intelligent Power Modules (IPMs) for the power conditioning of multiple electrical sources, optimally integrated into the electrical power generation system of the aircraft. Specific objectives are listed as follows:

• Development of high performance and efficiency IPMs with a minimum impact on the size and weight of the systems. This objective includes a design based on the most adequate topology based on advanced multilevel and interleaved topologies allowing a minimization of the passive components in terms of size and weight.
• Achieve a high performance based on the use of high-efficiency wide bandgap semiconductors and its integration in the most suitable multilevel topology, at the same time that minimum size and weight are pursued.
• High reliability and robustness based on a modular multilevel approach which removes the affected module in case of failure avoiding an interruption of the operation and permitting the operation with a degraded performance.
• Achieve a high modularity and scalability with a high percentage of common design of the AC/DC and DC/DC modules, optimizing thus the integration of both power stages, the manufacturing process and the Mean Time Between Repair.
• Providing a full controllability of both power stages to higher hierarchical controller based on an advanced hardware/software architecture scheme with a multi-core approach (FPGA + DSP+ARM) that fully control each power module with a high bandwidth capacity. The developed control electronics includes advanced features that includes protection and failure management functions for a primary and fast response and the possibility for implementing autonomous and/or emergency strategies.
• Development of a specific modulation to obtain the highest performance of the proposed topology, optimizing the desired parameters (efficiency, losses, etc.).