Evaluation of DC-DC Converter Topologies for a Safe Electrical Architecture Design

Abstract

The power supply of an All Electric Aircraft (AEA) uses multiple power sources such as a fuel cell system and a battery system. The integration of power sources leads to the scope of different types of integration concepts that define the source-side architecture. The aim of this thesis is to investigate different converter topologies used for different architecture types, with a focus on evaluating the architectures. In this work, a two-port architecture (TPA) using two individual dual active bridge (DAB) converters to integrate the power sources into the EPS is compared with a multi-port architecture (MPA) using a triple active bridge (TAB) converter to integrate the sources. The comparison is based on the efficiencies obtained by simulating the converters in the PLECS simulation software for different selected operating points of the mission profile. The analysis of the simulation results shows that a two-port converter architecture has higher efficiencies during take-off than a multi-port architecture. While both two-port and multi-port architectures offered equal efficiencies during cruise operation. A multi-port architecture with TAB showed higher efficiencies during the descent phase. The results of this research showed through evaluation that a multi-port architecture is the more suitable architecture compared to the two-port architectur