Reliability oriented thermal management of aircraft power converters

Harikumaran, Jayakrishnan; Buticchi, Giampaolo; MIgliazza, Giovanni; Wheeler, Patrick; Galea, Michael

Abstract

On board electrical power generation continue to increase as more aircraft systems are being electrified. Increasingly power converters are the interface of power generation and electrical loads in aircrafts. Reliability of aircraft power electronics is essential for high reliability and mission critical applications. Along with wear-out failure mechanisms, random failure modes must also be addressed to realize high reliability aerospace power converters. A dominant random failure mode in aerospace environment is due to cosmic rays (CR). In this work, a thermal management approach is proposed to maximize reliability of the converters considering CR failure mode. The proposed thermal controller is validated with an experimental setup. In the discussion, the trade-off involved between wear-out and CR induced failure mode is addressed.

Citation

Harikumaran, J., Buticchi, G., MIgliazza, G., Wheeler, P., & Galea, M. (2020). Reliability oriented thermal management of aircraft power converters. In 2020 IEEE 9th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (IPEMC2020-ECCE Asia) (1590-1594). https://doi.org/10.1109/IPEMC-ECCEAsia48364.2020.9367638

• Conference Name: 2020 IEEE 9th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (IPEMC2020-ECCE Asia)
• Conference Location: Nanjing, China
• Start Date: Nov 29, 2020
• End Date: Dec 2, 2020
• Acceptance Date: Aug 7, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Apr 9, 2021
• Publication Date: Nov 29, 2020
• Deposit Date: Nov 18, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 7, 2021
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Pages: 1590-1594
• Book Title: 2020 IEEE 9th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (IPEMC2020-ECCE Asia)
• ISBN: 978-1-7281-5302-5
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/IPEMC-ECCEAsia48364.2020.9367638
• Keywords: Cosmic ray failure; Reliability; Thermal control; Power electronics
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5053176
• Publisher URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9367638
• Additional Information: ©2020 IEEE. Personal use of the material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any future or current 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.