Investigation of Novel Multi-Phase Field-Oriented Drive Inverter Control with Fail-Operational Capabilities for Aircraft Applications

Abstract:
The third era of aviation demands for highly efficient and reliable electric drive systems to be established for commercial use. Within the European research project “AutoDrive” a six-phase inverter system for an autonomous aircraft has been developed. The drive system is realized with a 2x3-phase topology to provide fail-operational capabilities in case one of the 3-phase systems fails. A control system must be developed for a dual-three phase permanent magnet synchronous machine to utilize the fail-operational capabilities. This paper presents the highly efficient SiC drive inverter with fail-operational capabilities for small electric aircrafts including a multiphase field-oriented inverter control approach. The control algorithm is able to adapt automatically to the failure of one of the 3-phase subsystems without the need for a software-related change in the control scheme or even the necessity to detect the failure itself.