Investigation of novel multi-phase field-oriented drive inverter control with fail-operational capabilities for aircraft applications

The third era of aviation demands for highly efficient and reliable electric drive systems to be established for commercial use. Within the European research project ""AutoDrive"" a six-phase inverter system for an autonomous aircraft has been developed. The drive system is realized with a 2x3-phase topology to provide fail-operational capabilities in case one of the 3-phase systems fails. A control system must be developed for a dual-three phase permanent magnet synchronous machine to utilize the fail-operational capabilities. This paper presents the highly efficient SiC drive inverter with fail-operational capabilities for small electric aircrafts including a multiphase field-oriented inverter control approach. The control algorithm is able to adapt automatically to the failure of one of the 3-phase subsystems without the need for a software-related change in the control scheme or even the necessity to detect the failure itself.