Challenges and Opportunities for Wound Field Synchronous Generators in Future More Electric Aircraft

Wang, Yinli; Nuzzo, Stefano; Zhang, He; Zhao, Weiduo; Gerada, Chris; Galea, Michael

Abstract

Electrical machines and drives keep moving away from traditional technologies such as brushed machines and wound field machines towards lighter, ‘easier to maintain’ machines. A very interesting aspect is that certain transport applications, especially the aerospace industry, still favour the classical wound field machine for its main generating system such as the Boeing 787. This paper focuses on investigating this particular trend by presenting a detailed overview of historical power generation systems on aircraft. This paper compares the current state of the art of wound field machines with other generator families. The results of this analysis are then projected into the needs of the electrical power generation and distribution system on aircraft. While power density is a major objective for any aerospace application, however the extra benefits associated with wound field systems are still essential in modern aircraft. The paper then focuses on the main challenges for improving power density of wound field machines. Recommendations, opportunities and improvements related to wound field machines are discussed. In conclusion, if robust designs for higher speed wound field generators were consolidated, it would be very probable that these classical machines might still be implemented on future MEA platforms.

Citation

Wang, Y., Nuzzo, S., Zhang, H., Zhao, W., Gerada, C., & Galea, M. (2020). Challenges and Opportunities for Wound Field Synchronous Generators in Future More Electric Aircraft. IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification, 6(4), 1466-1477. https://doi.org/10.1109/tte.2020.2980189

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 26, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Mar 11, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020-12
• Deposit Date: Apr 7, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 8, 2020
• Journal: IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification
• Electronic ISSN: 2372-2088
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 1466-1477
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/tte.2020.2980189
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4264968
• Publisher URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9032140
• Additional Information: © 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.