Electrical Machines for the More Electric Aircraft: Partial Discharges Investigation

Madonna, Vincenzo; Giangrande, Paolo; Zhao, Weiduo; Zhang, He; Gerada, Christopher; Galea, Michael

Abstract

Modern electrical machines employed in transportation applications are required to provide high performance in terms of power (and torque) density. At the same time, being these applications safety-critical, a significant level of reliability and/or fault tolerance is expected. Among all the factors which can compromise motors reliability, partial discharges (PDs) inception is one of the most crucial, in particular for low voltage, random wound machines. This article presents an extensive experimental investigation on PDs in electrical machines for aerospace applications. Measurements are carried out using both sinusoidal and fast-rising pulses in a representative aerospace environment, emulating the typical ambient conditions encountered throughout a commercial aircraft mission, and beyond (i.e., down to 30 mbar). As a main result of the investigation, it is proved that electrical machines employed for actuating primary flight control surfaces feature a higher risk of PDs inception. Therefore, their insulation system demands an extremely careful design.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 4, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Dec 22, 2020
• Publication Date: 2021-03
• Deposit Date: Feb 26, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 26, 2021
• Journal: IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications
• Print ISSN: 0093-9994
• Electronic ISSN: 1939-9367
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 57
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 1389-1398
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/TIA.2020.3046434
• Keywords: Control and Systems Engineering; Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5352713
• Publisher URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9302643
• 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.