Solid-state Circuit Breaker for aircraft high voltage DC network

Advancement of electrified aircraft propulsion (EAP) involves the increase of voltage and power levels. However, developing fast and safe DC Solid-State Circuit Breaker (SSCB) for a high voltage DC network bring considerable challenges. This paper deals with the design of a high voltage bidirectional SSCB for a 3 kV / 250 kW aircraft DC network. The design of high-power semiconductor switches using a combination of hybrid high-power Transient Voltage Suppression (TVS) diodes and Metal Oxide Varistors (MOV) for clamping voltage and clearing fault currents is presented. The possibility to use such a new configuration to replace the traditional SSCB for EAP systems is discussed in this paper.