Control of MW-Scale High-Frequency "SiC+Si" Multilevel ANPC Inverter in Pump-Back Test for Aircraft Hybrid-Electric Propulsion Applications

• Published in: IEEE journal of emerging and selected topics in power electronics Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 1002 - 1012
• Main Authors: Pan, Di, Zhang, Di, He, Jiangbiao, Immer, Chris, Dame, Mark E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.02.2021; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Aerospace electronics; Aircraft; Control methods; Electric motors; Electronic devices; Engineering; High speed; High-frequency control; high-speed motor drive; Hybrid propulsion; hybrid-electric propulsion (HEP); Inductors; Inverters; multilevel inverter; Performance evaluation; Power supplies; pump-back test; Silicon carbide
• ISSN: 2168-6777; 2168-6785
• DOI: 10.1109/JESTPE.2020.2963890

High-power-density high-speed electric motors for aircraft hybrid-electric propulsion (HEP) applications require high fundamental output frequency from power inverters. Conventional silicon (Si)-based megawatt (MW)-scale power inverters typically have low switching frequency that is not sufficient to meet the dynamic and harmonic requirements for such applications. An MW-scale medium-voltage three-level active neutral-point-clamped (ANPC) inverter based on a hybrid utilization of silicon carbide (SiC) and Si power devices (i.e., "SiC+Si") has been developed for high-speed HEP drive applications, which has a rated output frequency of 1.4 kHz at 1-MW active power. To evaluate the power capability and efficiency of this ANPC inverter in the laboratory, power pump-back tests need to be carried out. In this article, control methods for single- and three-phase inverter pump-back tests have been developed to evaluate the performance of such high-frequency propulsion drives. The implementation and experimental results are presented to verify the efficacy of the control methods and the performance of the MW-scale "SiC+Si" ANPC inverters.