Analysis and survey of multi-phase power electronic converter topologies for the more electric aircraft applications

To improve aircraft efficiency, reliability and maintainability, the aerospace world has found in the progressive electrification of on-board services the way to reduce or to remove the presence of the hydraulic, mechanical and the bleed air/pneumatic systems. This concept is called the More Electric Aircraft (MEA), which involves the introduction of the electromechanical actuators and the electrohydraulic actuators. Also the entire electrical generation and distribution system is subject to radical revisiting, with a trend which is leaving the constant frequency AC energy distribution in favor of variable frequency or DC solutions. The literature reports survey papers regarding the electrical machines and their electromechanical design for the MEA but only a few papers presented a survey analysis of the power electronic converters employed for aircraft applications. The paper presents a review of power electronics converters topologies which can be used in more electric aircraft, with a particular focus on multi-phase drive systems.