Packed U‐Cell Inverter and Its Variants with Fault Tolerant Capabilities for More Electric Aircraft

More electric aircrafts (MEAs) replace many mechanical and hydraulic units with electrical ones, resulting in lighter and more reliable aircraft. As a result, there is major fuel savings, decreased environmental impact, lesser maintenance requirement, and better passenger accommodations. Multilevel inverters (MLIs) are used in MEA for the conversion of DC power into AC power. The reliability of MLIs is an important factor to provide uninterruptable power supply for “safety‐critical” operations. Power semiconductor switches and capacitors are the most vulnerable components in MLIs. Switch failure (open‐circuit (OC) or short‐circuit (SC) fault) in MLI can result in catastrophic failure of the system and can lead to life loss. The need for fault tolerance in MLI is utmost requirement nowadays for MEAs. The MLI used in MEA should be fault tolerant (FT). The FT MLIs provide uninterruptible power supply under faulty conditions. This chapter discusses the operation of five‐level packed U‐cell (PUC5) inverters and their FT variants under normal and faulty conditions.