Power electronics design for a 50 PAX hybrid-electric regional aircraft

Prospective Life Cycle Inventory Datasets for Conventional and Hybrid-Electric Aircraft Technologies

“…Power drives transfer the energy from the energy-generating to the energy-consuming components, while power electronics manage the conversion between analogic current (AC) and direct current (DC) as well as the adjustment of the voltage level between the battery, fuel cell, high-voltage onboard network and the low-voltage onboard network in the aircraft. The power drives technology chosen was permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSM) because permanent magnets increase the overall power density of the electric machines, which is desirable for aviation applications (Meindl et al, 2023b). The modeling details of the power electronics and drives are documented in Appendix.…”

“…The manufacturing of the power electronics (relevant for all configurations except ICE; see Fig. 1B) included a motor drive inverter, a battery DC-DC converter, a DC-AC grid inverter, and an isolating DC-DC converter for the low-voltage supply (Meindl et al, 2023b). Fuel cell DC-DC converters and generator drive AC-DC inverters were used exclusively for fuel cell and ICE-battery configurations.…”