More electric aircraft challenges: A study on 270 V/90 V interleaved bidirectional DC–DC converter

Abstract

The concept of more electric aircraft (MEA) has gained increased importance in the aviation industry to make the aircraft energy efficient and reduce carbon footprints. MEA facilitates transition towards clean energy and accomplishing the United Nations’ net-zero emission goal by 2050. An efficient and reliable dc–dc converter is an indispensable part of the MEA that interfaces 270VDC and 28VDC bus bars in aircraft applications. Dual Active Bridge is a well-known and promising topology for this application; however, the problem of current and voltage ripples deteriorates the life of the battery and filtering components. In addition, the mentioned voltage levels demand high voltage gain, which makes design challenging. To reduce the voltage gain requirement along with ripple minimization, a two-stage bidirectional converter is proposed by combing a three-phase interleaved buck-boost converter with Dual Active Bridge. The three-phase interleaved bidirectional converter is modelled and analysed using the state-space averaging method, and a controller is established. Simulation results demonstrate the efficacy of the design. The research carried out in this paper can serve as a reference and offer future research directions using the proposed idea, which might assist other researchers in developing an efficient design, eventually facilitating the MEA and carbon footprint reduction.

Keywords

• More electric aircraft (MEA)
• Interleaved bidirectional converter (IBC)
• Electrification
• Clean energy
• Green energy