Developing Analysis for Large Displacement Stability for Aircraft Electrical Power Systems 2014-01-2115

Future more electric aircraft (MEA) architectures that improve electrical power system's (EPS's) source and load utilization will require advance stability analysis capabilities. Systems are becoming more complex with bidirectional flows from power regeneration, multiple sources per channel and higher peak to average power ratios. Unknown load profiles with large transients complicate common stability analysis techniques. Advancements in analysis are critical for providing useful feedback to the system integrator and designers of multi-source, multi-load power systems.

Overall, a framework for evaluating stability with large displacement events has been developed. Within this framework, voltage transient bounds are obtained by identifying the worst case load profile. The results can be used by system designers or integrators to provide specifications or limits to suppliers. Subsystem suppliers can test and evaluate their design prior to integration and hardware development. By identifying concerns during the design phase, a more streamlined approach to hardware development can save on rework, integration delays and cost. This paper will review previous approaches to stability analysis of EPS architectures for large-signal disturbance events, including a linear matrix inequality based approach. A new approach based on optimal control is proposed, which offers several advantages over the previous analysis approaches including the ability to handle time-scale dependent source and load capabilities. Applicable simulation results and comparisons are presented in the context of aircraft EPSs. The ultimate objective of this effort is to develop a simple-to-use analysis tool to aid in evaluating robust EPSs. Initial developments in the analysis tool are discussed and presented.