Hybridization of an aircraft emergency electrical network: Experimentation and benefits validation

This paper proposes a structure and two strategies for hybridization of a RAT (Ram Air Turbine) with supercapacitor storage. The structure consists in coupling a High Voltage DC (HVDC) source (RAT) with a low voltage storage device through a specific topology of bidirectional DC-DC static converter. The energy management strategies consists in entrusting the storage with the “high frequency” harmonics of the load power while the RAT only produces the average power: the RAT sizing and its mass can then be reduced. Lab test bench architecture, control strategy, topology of the converter and experimental results are presented in this paper.