April 12, 2022 -- A 3-year project has been awarded recently by ONR to develop an advanced integrated solution for machine-drive electric propulsion systems, aiming to improve the system reliability in safety-critical applications. Dr. He serves as the PI to lead this project.
The emerging wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductor switches have been increasingly utilized in electric propulsion drives over the past few years, in order to enhance energy efficiency and power density of propulsion drivetrains. However, the fast switching speed of the WBG switches also induces notable reflected voltage stress on the stator windings and high-frequency current in the bearing of the machines, resulting in premature aging or failures in propulsion machines (see Dr. He's tutorial in IEEE IEMDC-2019 for more details). This has become a pressing concern for safety-critical applications such as electric ships or electric aircraft, particularly for the medium-voltage high-power propulsion systems in these applications. In this project, Dr. He's team will develop an advanced integrated solution to address such challenges and improve the propulsion system reliability.
