Similar to the efforts to move towards electric vehicles, much research has focused on the idea of a more electric aircraft (MEA). The motivations for this research are similar to that for vehicles and include goals to reduce emissions and decrease fuel consumption. In traditional aircraft, mutiple systems may use one type or a combination of types of energy, including electrical, hydraulic, mechanical, and pneumatic energy. However, all energy types have different drawbacks, including the sacrifice of total engine efficiency in the process of harvesting a particular energy, as with hyrdaulic and pneumatic systems. The goal for future aircraft is to replace most of the major systems currently utilizing non-electric power, such as environmental controls and engine start, with new electrical systems to improve a variety of aircraft characteristics, such as efficiency, emissions, reliability, and maintenance costs. This paper provides an in-depth look into how the systems have-or will-be changed. Future aircraft capabilities such as electric taxi and gas-electric propulsion for aircraft are also included for discussion. Most recent commercial transport aircrafts are described as the current state-of-the-art electric aircraft system. Future goals, including those of NASA, are presented for future advances in MEA.

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An integration of an electric motor and a drive with wide-bandgap (WBG) devices possesses numerous attractive features for electrified and decentralized actuation systems. The WBG devices can operate at a high-junction temperature (>170°C) with improved efficiency due to fast switching speed and low on-state resistance. It also leads to better performance and higher power density electro-hydrostatic actuators (EHAs) than the traditional solutions, which are being widely adopted in industrial applications such as aerospace, robotics, automobiles, manufacturing, wind turbine, and off-road vehicles. This paper introduces and investigates the benefits of the integrated motor drive with the WBG-based power electronics for the EHA systems.

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