Impact of Engine Certification Standards on the Design Requirements of More-Electric Engine Electrical System Architectures

The development of the More-Electric Engine (MEE) concept will see an expansion in the power levels, functionality and criticality of electrical systems within engines. However, to date, these more critical electrical systems have not been accounted for in existing engine certification standards. To begin to address this gap, this paper conducts a review of current engine certification standards in order to determine how these standards will impact on the design requirements of More-Electric Engine (MEE) electrical system architectures. The paper focuses on determining two key architectural requirements: the number of individual failures an architecture can accommodate and still remain functional and the rate at which these failures are allowed to occur. The paper concludes by discussing how the derived failure rates begin to define a set of design requirements for MEE electrical architectures, considering various operating strategies, and demonstrates their application to example MEE electrical system architecture designs.