Silicon carbide MOSFETs in more electric aircraft power converters: the performance and reliability benefits over silicon IGBTs for a specified flight mission profile

O'Donnell, Shane; Debauche, Jean-Louis; Wheeler, Patrick; Castellazzi, Alberto

Abstract

This paper describes the design, construction and performance of a 5 kVA aviation power module containing silicon carbide MOSFETs. The function and control of this module within a commercial aviation power electrical control unit (ECU) application is explained and the power dissipation benefits from the use of these MOSFETs instead of silicon IGBTs when driving an electrical motor controlling an aileron are presented. The paper shows the calculated reliability figures for the power module in this application and an application-specific reliability test to verify 150,000 flight hours of module operation is introduced. Performance test results from a prototype unit are also presented.

Citation

O'Donnell, S., Debauche, J.-L., Wheeler, P., & Castellazzi, A. Silicon carbide MOSFETs in more electric aircraft power converters: the performance and reliability benefits over silicon IGBTs for a specified flight mission profile. Presented at 18th European Conference on Power Electronics and Applications

• Conference Name: 18th European Conference on Power Electronics and Applications
• End Date: Sep 9, 2016
• Acceptance Date: Jul 19, 2016
• Publication Date: Sep 6, 2016
• Deposit Date: Jan 9, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 9, 2017
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: Aerospace, IGBT, Intelligent Power Module (IPM), Mission Profile, Modelling, MOSFET, Power semiconductor device, Reliability, Silicon Carbide (SiC), Systems engineering, Wide bandgap devices
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/819005
• Publisher URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7695504/
• Related Public URLs: http://www.epe2016.com/
• Additional Information: © 2016 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.
• Contract Date: Jan 9, 2017