Regenerative electric power for More Electric Aircraft

The More Electric Aircraft (MEA) emphasizes the utilization of electrical power as opposed to hydraulic, pneumatic, and mechanical power for optimizing aircraft performance and life cycle cost. The main sources of regenerative energy in the more electric aircraft power distribution system are the aircraft actuation systems: ailerons, rudder, flaps, spoilers, horizontal stabilizers and others. Instead of dissipating the energy as heat, the regenerative electric energy from the motor drives can be stored in energy storage elements such as flywheels, ultra-capacitors and batteries. Using the Simcaps toolbox, an aileron model with the electro-mechanical actuator (EMA) is developed in Matlab/Simulink. This regenerative power system consisting of a synchronous generator, three-phase-to dc boost rectifier, EMA including an input filter, ESE and a bidirectional dc-dc converter interfacing with ESE is presented. A single-phase half-bridge bidirectional dc-dc converter is used in this configuration. Two power management control strategies are applied in this simulation study, load-leveling and load-following procedures. In both strategies, ESE compensates for the difference between the electric drive requirements and the power provided by power distribution bus. Considering some important factors, such as weight, size and durability of the ESE, the load-following control strategy appears to be the most suitable for a regenerative power system in the more electric aircraft.