Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - INSTEP (INnovative SmarT Electric Power Distribution)

Teaser

The INSTEP Consortium will bring together the world-leading expertise of the University of Nottingham and Zodiac Aerospace in aircraft Electrical Power Systems (EPS) and Power Electronics (PE) to design, develop, manufacture, and provide functional tests of innovative Power...

Summary

The INSTEP Consortium will bring together the world-leading expertise of the University of Nottingham and Zodiac Aerospace in aircraft Electrical Power Systems (EPS) and Power Electronics (PE) to design, develop, manufacture, and provide functional tests of innovative Power Distribution Units (PDUs) for safe control and protection of both High-Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) and Low-Voltage Direct Current (LVDC) electrical generation systems. This will be a key component in the creation and demonstration of the Next Generation Civil Tilt Rotor aircraft being developed by Leonardo Helicopters in frame of Clean Sky 2.

The specific objective of this Proposal is to satisfy the topic requirements (JTI-CS2-2016-CFP03-FRC-
01-09 “Power Distribution”) as set out in the Call for Proposals. This will require the completion and
delivery of the following objectives:

• Development of the innovative power distribution system concept to provide the most efficient use of available power sources onboard and to meet strict safety and reliability requirements whilst minimising overall EPS weight (to be conducted within WP0 “Conceptual Design”)

• Detailed development of EPDS architecture to ensure safe and efficient distribution of HVDC power from the primary sources to the respective equipment (loads) – this will be a key activity within WP2 and WP4 (Preliminary and Detailed system design, correspondingly). Many innovative solutions will be developed (to be detailed in further Sections), including distributed architecture and “smart” energy management, health monitoring, EMC and power quality considerations, faults diagnostics and detection, as well as application of wide band gap power electronic devices for power distribution and power conversion

• Development of a set of architectural, functional and behavioural models to support preliminary and detailed (critical) designs of PDUs (to be conducted within WP3)

• Design, development and manufacturing of DC/DC converter (topology and regulation techniques) to provide the most efficient power conversion between HVDC and LVDC while minimising overall size and weight (WP2 – WP4)

• Manufacturing of fully representative PDUs and integration rig for end-to-end system testing (within WP5 and WP6) and development of functional test procedures (WP6)

• Functional testing of developed hardware and software, preparation of corresponding Test Reports (as part of WP6 activities)

• Investigation into the technological challenges and potential improvements of existing EPDS related technologies towards next generation of EPDS solution; reporting on suggested enhancements of technological bricks beyond state-of-the-art (activity within WP7)

Work performed

Work on the project covered by this report includes activities within Work Packages 1 to 4, where the Systems requirements have been analysed and agreed between the project Consortium and the Topic Manager. The Conceptual design has been performed in WP1, Preliminary Design work has taken place in WP2 and System Modelling has been performed in WP3. Some work on Detailed design has been performed in WP4.

Final results

INSTEP will deliver the innovative electric power distribution technology for Next Generation Civil Tilt Rotor (NextGen CTR) required by the Fast Rotorcraft IADP in Clean Sky 2. The proposed technology, based on advances of power electronic and smart electrical energy management is a key element in enabling the next wave of technology integration for More Electric Aircraft.

The power distribution and power management technologies proposed in INSTEP will unlock the door to integration of further electrical systems into regional aircraft. In addition to the technological innovations, the project will also generate new knowledge in the following areas:
• Efficient and compact power distribution centres design
• Smart power management methodology allowing to maximise usage of available on-board power sources
• Electric faults prognostics, detection and management (EPDS reconfiguration)
• HVDC/LVDC converter control design optimised for loss minimisation, including ways of its efficient modelling
• EMC and electric power quality phenomena in aircraft EPDS
• Electric power grid reliability
• High reliability systems for mission critical and safety
• Distributed electric power generation and control
• Scalable high efficiency and reduced weight/volume power converters