Rising power demands in More Electrical Aircraft (MEA) put power converters for commercial airplanes under increasing pressure to fulfill current harmonic distortion regulations as specified, for example, in DO-160G. Today, the implementation of filters is seen as an effective tool for dealing with harmonics, however, their increased weight and volume is not welcomed in the aerospace industry. This paper proposes a circuit, named Forced Commutation Series Capacitor rectifier (FCSC-rectifier), which is able to maintain low individual harmonic current levels without the need for filter components. The FCSC-rectifier includes a variable capacitive line reactance that interacts in a controlled manner with the inductive line impedance. The result is that the converter input current is nearly purely sinusoidal with a power factor of almost unity. The FCSC-rectifier is to be used for stand-alone variable-voltage, variable-frequency generation systems (VFG) and can therefore power the Full Authority Digital Electronic Control System (FADEC) in an MEA. This paper shows that the FCSC-rectifier can maintain a high power factor and acceptable current harmonic levels without the use of filters, despite large voltage and frequency variations. A full description of the circuit modes of operation is presented in this paper together with simulation results showing circuit performance characteristics over a range of voltages and frequencies. Results are experimentally verified using a 1kW test circuit. Index Terms-Forced Commutated controlled Series Capacitor (FCSC), Full Authority Digital Electronic Control System (FADEC), More Electric Aircraft (MEA), current harmonics, power factor. I. INTRODUCTION he complexity of aircraft electrical loads has substantially increased in recent years with the advent of the More Electric Aircraft (MEA) [1-3]. The most safety critical system in any MEA is the FADEC (Full Authority Digital Electronic Control)system that continuously monitors and controls the ignition timing and fuel injection to the aircraft engine. FADEC control and designs have been reported in [4][5][6] with the focus being mainly on safety. Any failure within the FADEC leads to misfiring and loss of fuel injection [7-10] which would result in a catastrophic event, such as the Airbus A 400M crash in 2015 caused by FADEC failure [11]. One major area of concern is radiated and conducted EMI which could interact with the engine control

No abstract

No abstract

UK and is a regular invited keynote speaker. His current research interests include power electronics for automotive applications, thermal management, health monitoring techniques, and advanced nonlinear control.

No abstract