Active Disturbance Rejection Control of DC-Bus Voltages Within a High-Speed Aircraft Electric Starter/Generator System

Wide-speed range operation capabilities in both motoring and generation modes are essential for an aircraft electrical starter/generator (ESG) drive system for more-electric aircraft applications. When running as a generator, the ESG is supplying power to the main HVdc bus within the onboard electrical system. A fast and robust dc bus voltage would be beneficial to electrical loads connected to it. In this article, an active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) is proposed to realize a fast and robust regulation of onboard dc bus voltages. The ADRC is achieved with a second-order extended state observer (ESO) to generate torque reference for the ESG. All the key characteristics, such as the stability of ESO, dc voltage tracking performance, and disturbance rejection capability of the ADRC for aircraft ESG applications, are thoroughly analyzed. To enhance system stabilities, an innovative and simple design method for the ADRC and ESO gains is introduced based on the gain-margin and phase-margin criteria. Experimental results have shown that, compared with the conventional PI-based dc voltage control, the proposed method can realize a faster and more robust dc voltage control.