A Megawatt-Scale Medium-Voltage High-Efficiency High Power Density "SiC+Si" Hybrid Three-Level ANPC Inverter for Aircraft Hybrid-Electric Propulsion Systems

• Published in: IEEE transactions on industry applications Vol. 55; no. 6; pp. 5971 - 5980
• Main Authors: Zhang, Di, He, Jiangbiao, Pan, Di
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-11-2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Active neutral point clamped (ANPC) inverter; Aircraft; Carrier frequencies; Data buses; Efficiency; Electric potential; Electronics; Energy conversion efficiency; ENGINEERING; Field effect transistors; High efficiency; High power density; Hybrid propulsion systems; Hybrid-electric propulsion systems; Insulated gate bipolar transistors; Inverters; MOSFET; MOSFETs; Power converters; Power efficiency; Semiconductor devices; Silicon; Silicon carbide; Switches; Topology; Transistors; Voltage; Weight reduction
• ISSN: 0093-9994; 1939-9367
• DOI: 10.1109/TIA.2019.2933513

A hybrid-electric propulsion system is an enabling technology to make the aircraft more fuel saving, quieter, and lower carbide emission. In this article, a megawatt (MW) scale power inverter based on a three-level active neutral-point-clamped (3L-ANPC) topology will be developed. To achieve high efficiency, the switching devices operating at carrier frequency in the power converter are configured by the emerging silicon carbide (SiC) metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors, while the conventional silicon (Si) insulated-gate bipolar transistors are selected for switches operating at the fundamental output frequency. To obtain high power density, dc bus voltage is increased from the conventional 270 V to medium voltage of 2.4 kV to reduce cable weight. Also, unlike the traditional 400 Hz dominated aircraft ac systems, the rated fundamental output frequency here is boosted to 1.4 kHz to drive the high-speed motor, which helps further to reduce the motor weight. Main hardware development and control modulation strategies are presented. Experimental results are presented to verify the performance of this MW-scale medium-voltage "SiC+Si" hybrid 3L-ANPC inverter. It is shown that the 1-MW 3L-ANPC inverter can achieve a high efficiency of 99% and a high power density of 12 kVA/kg.