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SILICON CARBIDE JFET BASED SOLID STATE CIRCUIT BREAKERS FOR MEDIUM VOLTAGE DC SYSTEMS
Title
SILICON CARBIDE JFET BASED SOLID STATE CIRCUIT BREAKERS FOR MEDIUM VOLTAGE DC SYSTEMS
Creator
Moradkhani Roshandeh, Aref
Date
2016, 2016-07
Description
In application areas such as data centers, electric ships and dc microgrids, dc systems are better systems than ac counterparts, however lack...
Show moreIn application areas such as data centers, electric ships and dc microgrids, dc systems are better systems than ac counterparts, however lack of a fast, reliable and cost effective dc circuit breaker is a big obstacle on the way of development and wide usage of these kind of systems. Nowadays since the demand for electric power and especially, access to renewable energy sources such as solar thermal generation which are located in deserts and off-shore wind power, continuously increases the demand and interest in High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) and Medium Voltage Direct Current (MVDC) systems. In order to accept and rely on such systems, availability of fast and robust circuit breakers is inevitable which makes them one of the key enabling technologies. This thesis introduces a novel design for solid state circuit breakers (SSCB) for MVDC systems. This SSCB is inactive during normal operation and when a fault occurs, by getting power from the fault condition will be triggered on and clear the fault. This SSCB is consisted of a fast startup flyback-forward converter as a gate driver and two normally-on SiC JFETs as the main static switches which share the bus voltage equally during the fault condition. The operation principles of the SSCB are explained and analyzed in details. Moreover, prototypes are built and tested in short circuit tests. As observed in real test and experiments, the circuit breaker prototype can interrupt short circuit fault current up to 150 amperes at a dc bus voltage of 1000 volts within 3 microsecond.
M.S. in Electrical Engineering, July 2016
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Intelligent Battery Switching Module for Hybrid Electric Aircraft
Title
Intelligent Battery Switching Module for Hybrid Electric Aircraft
Creator
Kamal, Ahmad
Date
2022
Description
The growth in world economics, tourism and international cooperation has resulted in significant growth of civil aviation industry. This...
Show moreThe growth in world economics, tourism and international cooperation has resulted in significant growth of civil aviation industry. This growing number of fossil fuel reliant aircrafts will significantly increase waste gas emissions with detrimental impact on the environment. The system efficiency of the aircraft must be substantially improved to reduce the fuel burn and thus waste gas emissions. Therefore, the aircraft industry is pushing towards higher electrification of future aircrafts to increase system efficiency, reduce fuel burn and to lower emissions as well as operational costs. The more electric aircraft (MEA) design concept, commercially realized by Boeing 787 and Airbus A380, increases system efficiency by replacing the mechanical, pneumatic, and hydraulic systems with electrical systems. However, global regulation authorities demand further reduction in waste gas emissions and fuel burn. To meet these stringent demands, the aircraft industry is exploring hybrid electric aircrafts which can significantly reduce fuel burn by electrifying the propulsion train of the aircraft. This higher penetration of electrical energy in the aircraft warrants smart short-circuit protection with ultrafast response time. However, current hybrid aircrafts still use outdated mechanical and thermal short-circuit protection which have historically proven to cause numerous tragedies. Solid-state power controller (SSPC) is an alternate solution which uses semiconductor devices to offer faster response. However, the main drawbacks of SSPCs are their need for active cooling due to higher conduction loss and the use of foldback current limiting approach to limit the inrush current of DC-link capacitor of the powertrain. The foldback current limiting approach degrades the power semiconductor devices used due to excessive heat loss by driving the device near the safe operating area (SOA) limits of the device. This thesis presents a 750V/250A intelligent Li-ion battery switching module (BSM) for hybrid electric aircraft propulsion application. The BSM uses commercially available 1200 V SiC JFET power modules with ultra-low RDSON in parallel to achieve sub-mΩ total on-resistance, comparable to the incumbent mechanical contactor solution. This allows the total nominal conduction power loss of the BSM to be less than merely 23 W, permitting maintenance-free passive cooling. In contrast to the incumbent contactor solution, the BSM has ultrafast response (µs-level) to a fault condition. Which, in conjunction with the reduced fault current stress, significantly improves the operation lifetime of the entire system. The BSM incorporates various intelligent features by implementing a tri-mode operation concept, which allows to pre-charge the DC-link capacitor with a limited charging current in PWM mode. To mitigate single-point failures, several design redundancy measures are implemented to ensure reliability and safety for the aircraft. Design considerations of the circuit and physical design of the BSM are discussed in detail including the design of the custom laminated busbar and thermal analysis. Furthermore, the inherent uncontrolled oscillation phenomenon of the JFET cascode structure is explored and addressed. Finally, the experimental results obtained from the built and tested prototype of the BSM are reported.
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