Failure modes and reliability oriented system design for aerospace power electronic converters

Harikumaran, Jayakrishnan; Migliazza, Giovanni; Buticchi, Giampaolo; Madonna, Vincenzo; Giangrande, Paolo; Costabeber, Alessandro; Wheeler, Pat; Galea, Michael

Abstract

Aircraft electrification has been a major trend in aviation industry for past 20 years. Given the increasing electrical power requirement for future more electric aircraft and hybrid electric aircraft, research efforts has been ongoing in high power electrical conversion for air-borne systems. Safety critical nature of aviation systems places reliability of aerospace power converters as a critical design concern. In this paper, power electronic system reliability is studied with emphasis on lifetime limiting factors of critical sub components. Reliability of voltage source power converters at different system voltage levels are modelled for a starter generator drive converter. A key observation is that Si IGBT devices are sufficient with respect to reliability requirements in low and medium voltage systems (up to 540 V). At higher system voltages (above 540 V), multi level topologies are necessary for designing with Si IGBTs. In constant power profile drive, system reliability is minimally affected by wear-out failure of film capacitors in converter DC links. In multi level topologies without enhanced voltage derating, system reliability is dominated by cosmic ray induced random failures. Simulation results demonstrate that at high system voltages (810 V), 2 L topology with SiC mosfets outperform Si IGBT based 3 L topology with respect to reliability.

Citation

Harikumaran, J., Migliazza, G., Buticchi, G., Madonna, V., Giangrande, P., Costabeber, A., Wheeler, P., & Galea, M. (2021). Failure modes and reliability oriented system design for aerospace power electronic converters. IEEE Open Journal of the Industrial Electronics Society, 2, 53-64. https://doi.org/10.1109/OJIES.2020.3047201

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 14, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Dec 24, 2020
• Publication Date: Jan 16, 2021
• Deposit Date: Jan 22, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 22, 2021
• Journal: IEEE Open Journal of the Industrial Electronics Society
• Print ISSN: 2644-1284
• Electronic ISSN: 2644-1284
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2
• Pages: 53-64
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/OJIES.2020.3047201
• Keywords: Lifetime estimation, Mission profile, More Electric Aircraft, Multi level converter, Physic of failure, Reliability
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5205595
• Publisher URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9306785