A Two-Stage Isolated AC-DC Converter for More

Electric Aircraft

Hamid Radmanesh Mehdi Aeini

Faculty of Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering Department Shahid Beheshti University
Shahid Sattari Aeronautical University of Tehran, Iran
Science and Technology [email protected]
Tehran, Iran
[email protected]

Abstract— Nowadays, increasing use of power electronics at In the commercial aircrafts in order to supply specific DC
industrial applications, using active power electronic converters loads with 28 Vdc nominal voltage, conventional transformer
has become increasingly popular in more electric aircraft rectifier units (TRUs) were used to convert the AC voltage
(MEA) application. In airplanes due to presence of sensitive with 400 Hz frequency. Today the use of MEA technology in
loads and low space, the use of active three-phase rectifiers airliner industry leads to utilize a large number of AC-DC
instead of conventional transformer rectifier units (TRUs) converters to supply loads like fuel pumps, cabin
becomes more interesting. In this paper, a two-stage converter pressurization, engine start and flight control [3].
topology with a VIENNA rectifier in the first stage following a
DC-DC converter and a high-frequency transformer in the Today, AC/DC converters are used as active converters
second stage is proposed to obtain a regulated 28 VDC output instead of multi-pulse transformers to convert 115V/400Hz
voltage. In the proposed topology the stepped-up DC voltage of three-phase AC input voltage to 28 Vdc regulated output
VIENNA stage becomes pulsating voltage by a DC-DC voltage to reduce both output voltage DC ripple and reduce
converter and will be stepped-down by a high frequency THD of input currents compared to transformer models. The
transformer. The resulting topology has a more compact design proposed topologies in literature usually consist of two stages:
and higher efficiency and lower total harmonic distortion (THD) an active rectifier stage and a DC-DC stage. The most popular
with output isolation compared to conventional TRUs. The converters used as DC-DC stage are resonant converters both
control scheme for VIENNA rectifier is a double-loop current-
LLC or CLLC types [4] and phase shifted full-bridge
voltage controller based on hysteresis current control that is a
converters [5]-[6]. In [7] an AC/DC converter with a three-
simple scheme and more advantageous compared to other
control methods for rectifier units. In order to verify the
phase boost type PFC (power factor correction) in the first
effectiveness of the converter simulation results will be stage and a phase shifted full-bridge converter in the second
presented which show a power factor of 0.996 and input current stage is proposed that is shown in fig.1. It is shown that overall
total harmonic distortion (THD) about 4% and conversion power losses of the converter is variable with DC link voltage
efficiency more than 95 percent. changes and in order to optimize power losses an optimum
value for DC link voltage must be set [7]. The number of
Keywords— more electric aircraft (MEA), transformer semiconductor switches in proposed converter is relatively
rectifier unit (TRU), VIENNA rectifier, hysteresis current high (twelve active switches) that in turn increases power
controller losses in addition to cost and volume. Also, high number of
switches utilizes larger heat sink, more gate driver circuits and
requires complex control method. In [8] an isolated AC-DC
I. INTRODUCTION converter is proposed that in its structure the half and full-
bridge parts are eliminated. To control the circuit a SPWM
Today, the use of electrical equipment instead of method with common mode duty ratio injection method is
mechanical equipment in military aircraft and airliners is used to lower harmonic distortions. To solve problems and
increasing. The use of power electronic converters is disadvantages related to power losses, volume and cost of
increasing in order to supply different loads in aircraft, both AC/DC converters and PFCs, methods are proposed in
static and dynamic loads. In the past, most of equipment used literature that can be classified in three categories: (1) parallel
in aircraft was mechanical, pneumatic and hydraulic, but in single phase converter (2) reduced switch PFC converter (3)
order to increase efficiency and reduce volume and weight, single stage AC/DC converter [8].
using of electrical equipment is increasing nowadays.
The move toward replacing non-electrical systems in
aircrafts (fighter jets or commercial) with high efficiency
electrical systems led to advent a new concept named more
electric aircraft (MEA). In recent years, advances and
researches in MEA and application of power electronic
converters, drives and their modern and developing control
techniques paved the way for replacing conventional
mechanical, hydraulic and pneumatic systems with electrical
systems [1]. This substitution in turn improved capability, Fig.1. Converter topology presented in [7].
maintainability and reliability in addition to reducing volume
and weight of sensitive systems in aircraft operations [2]. In this paper an active rectifier topology will be presented
that can be incorporated in mentioned number (2) category. In

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 the first stage of the proposed topology there is a VIENNA output voltage across one cycle will be almost constant but
rectifier with a double-loop voltage and current controller and using closed-loop hysteresis control will equalize two
a hysteresis current controller to produce switching signals is voltages and fix the output voltage at the determined reference
used and in the right part of the converter a high-frequency value and decrease the input current THD.
step-down transformer is used.
In second stage of presented converter there is a full-bridge
The paper sections are classified as follows: in section II DC-DC converter that its four switches turn on and off with
circuit topology and converter model will be presented. high frequency such as 20 kHz that is used in this paper to
Section III describes control method and its characteristics and make the output voltage oscillating and its peak value can be
in the final sections the simulation results and conclusion will reduced to the desired value by means of a high-frequency
be presented. transformer. At last the oscillating high frequency voltage
with desired value will be rectified by means of a two-leg
II. CIRCUIT TOPOLOGY AND OPERATING PRINCIPLES diode rectifier because by this way there is no need to extra
The VIENNA rectifier is a three-switch rectifier and switching devices and therefore the switching loss will be
therefore controlling and implementing of this rectifier is reduced. using the proposed topology there is just seven
easier than some conventional rectifiers with six or more switching devices and the number of the switches compared
switches. Hence, there are some rectifiers with less switches with the phase-shifted topology presented in [7] that had
but they have some disadvantages like higher THD or twelve switches is significantly reduced and therefore the
unregulated output voltage and etc. VIENNA rectifier behaves switching loss and control complexity is reduced either.
like a rectifier with two switches and one of its switches’
frequency is input line frequency and other two switches are III. CONTROL SCHEME
switching at a high frequency [9]. VIENNA rectifier In order to design a control system for the proposed
compared with all dual-boost rectifiers has lower value current rectifier circuit a desirable mathematical model is required. In
of diode and switches and therefore semiconductor losses are this section using state-space averaging technique a transfer
lower. Also, one of the advantages of VIENNA rectifier is that function of the circuit in the balanced load condition will be
it can be implemented as a modular rectifier and the switch obtained. The VIENNA rectifier has five energy storage
and diodes of each power circuit legs can are available as a elements, thus its model in the stationary reference frame is a
module that can make it easier to implementation of the five order model as follows:
rectifier [10].
(1)
Fig.3 shows proposed converter including cascaded
VIENNA rectifier with a DC-DC converter followed by a
high- frequency transformer and a diode rectifier. To describe
operation of the VIENNA rectifier in constant switching
frequency the three-phase input sinusoidal voltages is shown
in fig.2.
2 1 1 2 1 1
0 0
3 3 3 3 3 3
1 2 1 1 2 1
0 0
3 3 3 3 3 3
1 1 2 1 1 2
0 0
3 3 3 3 3 3
1 1

1 1

Fig.2. three-phase source referenced to neutral [11] 0 0

Assuming the input phase currents are synchronous with
In this paper the VIENNA rectifier control method is
input phase voltages, in any control period that is 60 degrees
double-loop controller along with a hysteresis current
the integral of multiplication of voltage across current in 60
controller. The outer loop regulates the DC output voltage and
degree period will be the same as the positive and negative
the inner loop controls the DC current and modulation and
boost periods. In positive boost period the energy will be
generating gate signals is up to hysteresis current controller.
transferred in capacitor C1 and in negative boost period the
The basic concept of the hysteresis current control is shown in
energy will be transferred to the capacitor C2. In a 60 degree
fig.4. In this control method there is a lower and upper band
period the voltage Vdc1 and Vdc2 will vary with a frequency of
that are predefined. To control the switching frequency, the
three time bigger than line input frequency. At a control period
hysteresis band can be controlled. To determine the hysteresis
one of three switches is ON and another two switches will be
band between two factor of increasing the switching
ON with varying duty cycles. For example in a period from -
frequency and consequently increasing the switching loss as
30 to 30 degrees in the first half of the period the voltage of
result of decreasing bandwidth and decreasing the current
C1 is more than the voltage of C2 and at 0 degree V1 is on its
THD due to the increase of bandwidth, a balance must be
maximum value and V2 is minimum. Consequently, at the end
struck.
of the period the two voltages will be equal because the energy
stored in C1 and C2 in whole period is equal and the capacitors
are in balance. In the constant switching frequency the average

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 Fig.3. circuit topology of the proposed converter

Therefore, the small signal model between input currents

and output current is found and proves that these currents are
In hysteresis current control a additional voltage control proportional as (6):
loop is required to control the deviation of voltage deference
of two output capacitor voltages from zero [13]. One of ̃ 3
significant advantages of hysteresis current controller over (6)
̃
other controllers is that input current harmonics are distributed
over a wide range of harmonic spectrum and that is because Since the voltage difference between two output
of varying switching frequency over time [12]. Another capacitors caused by uneven leakage currents of the capacitors
advantages of hysteresis current controllers are stability, fast disturbs the switching order and thus the current harmonic,
response and inherent current limiting capability [14]. using a separate PI controller to zero the two capacitors
voltage difference is essential. The neutral point current
causes unbalanced capacitors’ voltages as (7):

∆
2
∆ (7)
2
1
∆
2
Fig.5 shows the block diagram of the control scheme on
the VIENNA rectifier. The thick lines in the diagram are three-
phase signals and thin lines are composed of single signals.
Fig.4 . hysteresis control of three-phase rectifiers[12]
The control method is a cascaded double-loop method that
Using the active power formula, the efficiency of the consist of a current loop, a DC center point capacitor voltage
rectifier can be calculated as (2): loop and a DC voltage loop. In the control scheme, the outer
loop is a voltage control loop which regulates sum of
(2) capacitors voltages by a PI controller. The output of the
3 cos voltage control loop will be the current reference of current
Under the unity PF and very small energy stored in the control loop.
inductors, power conversion can be expressed as (3): Hysteresis
current
, 3 (3) Vdc1 PI controller

XOR S1, S2, S3

Using the following equations, (3) can be linearized:
Vdc2 PI
0

(4) Vdc_ref Gain

, ̃
Vabc Iabc
̃
Fig.5. Control diagram of VIENNA rectifier
The DC current variations is dependent to AC currents,
AC voltages and DC voltage, as follows: In the control system, an extra loop is used to reduce and
3 3 zero the voltage difference of two capacitors by a PI
̃ ̃ (5) controller. Also, in the main voltage control loop, the sum of
capacitors voltage is compared with the reference output
voltage and controlled by another PI voltage controller. The

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 output of voltage control loop must be utilized to control and
regulate the rectifier input current. To do this, the output value
of voltage controller must be multiplied into a three-phase
signal synchronized with input voltage. For this purpose, input
voltage is multiplied by a gain of 1/115 to obtain a unit signal
that is in phase with the input voltage and finally multiplied at
voltage controller output. The resulted three-phase signal is
now added to the output value of the capacitors voltage
deviation controller to obtain the current reference of current
control loop. Finally, hysteresis current controller is used in
the current control loop to generate the switching signal for
three semiconductor switches. Because of operating principle
of VIENNA rectifier, switching gate signal of each phase
should be reversed in the negative half-cycle corresponding to
a phase voltage, as a result this is done using a logic XOR
operator.
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
The key simulation parameters are listed in the table I.

Table I. Key simulation parameters of the converter topology

Parameter Specification Fig. 6. Simulation results of the proposed converter with constant
1kW load. (a) Input three phase voltages (b) input three phase
Input voltage (Vin) 115 V RMS currents (c) output DC voltage (d) output VIENNA capacitors’
Input frequency 400 Hz voltage
Output voltage reference
28 V
(Vo_ref)
Switching frequency 20 kHz
Input filter inductor 0.22 mH
Output Vienna DC-link
2 mF
capacitor
Transformer nominal
1kVa
power
Transformer turn ratio 100:10
Load power 1 kW

The proposed rectifier is simulated in MATLAB/Simulink

environment that the input AC voltage is three-phase 115 V
(phase-neutral RMS) at 400 Hz frequency for avionic
applications and the output voltage of the rectifier will be
regulated at 28 Vdc voltage. In the control diagram the PI
controllers of the Vdc1-Vdc2 loop and Vdc1+ Vdc2-Vdc-ref loop are
set to P=0.05, I=1.05 and P=0.08, I=45, respectively. The gain
in the control diagram is set to 115 that is the peak value of the
input voltage. The four-switch second stage DC-DC converter Fig.7. FFT analysis of the input current
has a 20 kHz switching frequency with a constant 0.5 duty Fig.7 shows the FFT analysis of input current of the converter.
ratio. The hysteresis current control band is restricted to 0.2 in As shown in fig.7, THD value of the input current is at a
the controller. To verify the converter performance the desired value of 4.06 %. The harmonic orders that have
simulation is done in two different scenarios as follows. dominant value at FFT spectrum are 5th and 7th harmonic
A. Converter performance at 1 kW constant load orders.
In the first scenario of simulation the converter is Fig.8 shows input line-to-line voltage (after the input
supplying a 1 kW constant resistive load and the output filter) of VIENNA rectifier and current of the switches (i1, i2,
voltage regulation and input current THD is observed. Fig.6 i3) that specified in fig.3. As shown in fig.8 (a), the peak value
shows the simulation results in this scenario. of voltage is 280 volt that equals to output DC value of the
rectifier.
According to fig.6 (a) and (b), input voltage and input currents
are in phase and oscillating at 400Hz frequency. As shown in In order make a comparison, the conventional TRU
fig.6 (c), output voltage has a very fast response and settles in implemented with twelve-pulse transformer and diode
28 V reference value at less than 0.1 second and the DC rectifier is simulated and the results is shown in fig.9. As it is
voltage has about 2% ripple. In the fig.6 (d) two DC link shown in fig.9 (a), input currents of the conventional TRUs
capacitors’ voltage of VIENNA rectifier is shown that are have THD=8.8% that is high value for sensitive loads in
overlapping each other and their summation is 280 Vdc that it aircrafts.
should be stepped-down by a transformer.

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 B. Converter performance at step load change
In the second scenario the behavior of the proposed
converter at sudden step load change is investigated that is a
common case in aircraft (when one of two DC buses have
failure and load power on remaining bus is doubled).
In this scenario the resistive load power of the converter
is increased from 1 kW to 2 kW at the time of t=0.15s. the
simulation results is shown in fig.11.

Fig.8. simulation results of (a) input line-to-line voltage of

VIENNA rectifier (b)-(d) current of three switches of VIENNA
rectifier

Fig.11. simulation results of step load change in proposed converter.

(a) Input three-phase voltages (b) input three-phase currents (c)
output DC voltage (d) output DC load current.
Fig.11 demonstrates that converter controller maintains
the system's stability and does not have a high over-shoot on
the input and output voltage and currents when the load
sharply increases. As shown in fig.11 (c) the output DC
voltage follows reference 28 V value after a short 0.05 second
Fig.9. simulation results of conventional TRU. (a) Input three phase transient time and after that the voltage ripple approximately
currents (b) output DC voltage increases 1 percent.
One of the main attributes of rectifiers is the power factor Fig.12 demonstrates the converter efficiency curve
(PF) and it has effect on the converter efficiency. The input roughly calculated by circuit elements loss formulation in [7]
filter design has a significant effect on PF of the converter. at different load conditions. As shown in fig.12, the efficiency
Fig.10 shows the input active and reactive power of proposed of the converter at desired loads is more than 95% that is very
converter. As shown in fig.10, reactive power of the converter good value for active rectifiers for MEA applications and its
is about 0.5 Var and its value is very small compared with peak value at 1.4 kW load power will be 97.8%.
active power that is about 1000 watts. Consequently, the
power factor of the converter is 0.99 that is very desirable The proposed topology exhibits higher efficiency due to
value. The conventional TRU have reactive power of less number of semiconductor switches compared with the
approximately 200 Var and its power factor is about 0.95. converter topology in [8] and number of the switches
decreases 27% and consequently the switching losses
decreases.

99
Efficiency (%)

98

97

96

95
0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 2 6
Load power (kW)

Fig.10. the input active and reactive power of the proposed Fig.12. efficiency of the proposed converter at different load
converter conditions

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 V. CONCLUTION [5] G.-B. Koo, G.-W. Moon, and M.-J. Youn, “New zero-voltage-
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