Investigation of Stability Issue of IPM Starter/Generator for More Electric Aircraft

As the aerospace industry keeps moving towards greener and more eco-friendly solutions, the traditional hydraulic, pneumatic, and mechanical sub-systems are replaced with advanced electrical counterparts. Such more electric configuration offers improved efficiency, reduced emissions, less fuel consumption, and increased reliability. Due to the high speed, high power density and high torque density requirement from the aircraft application, Interior Permanent Magnet Starters/Generators (IPM S/G) are preferred over other machine configurations. However, significant challenges exist due to the voltage stability issue caused by constant power loads (CPLs), which may result in DC bus oscillations and effect the aircraft’s power quality and subsystem performance. This paper analyses the said stability problem in on-board DC microgrids (DCMG) for More Electric Aircraft (MEA) applications. A IPM S/G controlled by the rotor flux oriented vector control feeding power to CPLs is implemented in MATLAB/Simulink to investigate the voltage stability issues and concluding remarks are obtained.