Advanced Techniques for Accelerated Simulation Studies of Complex Aircraft Electrical Power Systems

This paper summarizes recent activities undertaken in the University of Nottingham towards development of simulation tools for accelerated simulation studies of complex aircraft electric power systems. The more-electric aircraft (MEA) is a major trend in aircraft electric power system (EPS) engineering that results in a significantly increased number of power electronic driven loads onboard. Development and assessment of EPS architectures, ensuring system integrity, stability and quality performance under normal and abnormal scenarios requires extensive simulation activity. Increased power electronics can make the simulation of a total EPS impractical due to large computation time or even numerical non-convergence due to the model complexity. Hence there is a demand for accurate but time-efficient modeling techniques for MEA EPS simulations. The paper focuses on the development of a modeling approach based-on functional representation of individual power system units to allow for fast simulation of a full generator-to-load power system under both normal and fault conditions. The paper reports the developed functional models library capable of significant improvement in simulation time whilst maintaining good within a specified frequency range. The library application is demonstrated on an example study of a twin-generator EPS dynamic performance under both normal and faulty regimes. The simulation acceleration attainable is illustrated.