News
Nov. 25, 2020 -- Congrats to Ben Luckett on Receiving the GAANN Fellowship
Nov. 25, 2020 -- Congratulations to Ben Luckett on receiving the ECE Graduate Assistantships in Areas of National Need (GAANN) Program funded by the U.S. Department of Education, starting January 18, 2021. Ben has joined the AMPERE Lab since May 2019, and has been working on advanced aircraft propulsion drives, under the supervision of Dr. He. Ben will start his Ph.D. studies in Jan 2021 and continue his research in the area of electric aircraft propulsion.
Nov. 16, 2020 -- Our Research on "Wind + Solar + Energy Storage" Hybrid Power Systems Published in IEEE Journal and ECCE-2020
Nov. 16, 2020 -- After two years of continuous dedication, our latest research on modeling and design optimization of "wind + solar + energy storage" hybrid power systems has been published in IEEE ACCESS journal and presented in ECCE-2020, a flagship international conference in power energy conversion. By leveraging the complementary power generation profiles between wind and solar, the technology of hybrid renewable sources is a promising solution to smooth out the intermittent power and reduce the energy storage capacity requirement. The titles of the papers are provided below and the full papers can be downloaded from IEEE Xplore online library.
- P. Roy, J. He and Y. Liao, "Cost Minimization of Battery-Supercapacitor Hybrid Energy Storage for Hourly Dispatching Wind-Solar Hybrid Power System," IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 210099-210115, 2020.
- P. Roy, J. He and Y. Liao, "Cost Optimization of Battery and Supercapacitor Hybrid Energy Storage System for Dispatching Solar PV Power," 2020 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE), Detroit, MI, USA, 2020, pp. 561-568.
Sept. 2, 2020 -- New NASA-KY Sponsored Project to Improve Aircraft Propulsion Drive Reliability
Sept 2, 2020 ---- NASA-KY sponsored a new research project with AMEPRE Lab to improve the reliability of civil aircraft propulsion drive systems. All-electric and hybrid-electric propulsion drives are the enabling technologies for next-generation civil aircraft, and the realibility of these propulsion drives has become more essential than ever for such safety-critical applications. In this project, the reliability of the propulsion drive systems operating in harsh enviroment (e.g., 50k feet altitude) will be investigated based on the proposed digital twin technologies.
Jun. 10, 2020 -- Multiple Journal Papers Published on Electric Aircraft Propulsion
June 2020 -- Multiple papers authored or co-authored by Dr. He have been published in IEEE journals on the development of lightweight high-efficiency electric aircraft propulsion drives, which is an emerging technology to enable next-generation aircraft cleaner, quieter, cheapter, and more energy saving. These papers are listed below (available in IEEE Xplore):
PWM Strategy: J. He, D. Zhang and D. Pan, "PWM Strategy for MW-Scale “SiC+Si” Active NPC Converter in Electric Aircraft Propulsion Applications," IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, doi: 10.1109/TIA.2020.3001880, June 2020.
Power Converter: D. Zhang, J. He and D. Pan, "A Megawatt-Scale Medium-Voltage High-Efficiency High Power Density “SiC+Si” Hybrid Three-Level ANPC Inverter for Aircraft Hybrid-Electric Propulsion Systems," IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, vol. 55, no. 6, pp. 5971-5980, Nov.-Dec. 2019.
Filter Design: J. He et al., "Multi-Domain Design Optimization of dv/dt Filter for SiC-Based Three-Phase Inverters in High-Frequency Motor-Drive Applications," IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, vol. 55, no. 5, pp. 5214-5222, Sept.-Oct. 2019
Control and Testing: D. Pan, D. Zhang, J. He, C. Immer and M. Dame, "Control of MW-Scale High-Frequency “SiC+Si” Multilevel ANPC Inverter in Pump-Back Test for Aircraft Hybrid-Electric Propulsion Applications," IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics, doi: 10.1109/JESTPE.2020.2963890, Jan 2020.
(Photo Courtesy of NASA: X-57 'Maxwell' electric airplane)
May. 19, 2020 -- Patent Granted on Fault-Tolerant Power Converters
A patent titled "Fault-tolerant topology for multilevel T-type converters", U.S. Patent No. 10,658,920, was granted by USPTO on May 19, 2020. This patent, authored by Prof. JiangBiao He and Prof. Nabeel Demerdash, invented a new power converter concept that provides soft switching and high efficiency during normal operation while enables desired fault-tolerant capability under switching fault condition. Unlike the conventional power converters where high efficiency and high reliability are typically conflicting factors due to the redundancy of power electronics, this proposed concept can be very attractive for many safety-critical applications where both reliability and power efficiency are critical, such as propulsion drives in electric vehicles and electric aircraft, solar inverters, and the like. More details of this patent can be found on the USPTO Website.
May. 1, 2020 -- Ben Luckett Received the 2020 UK-ECE Robert L. Cosgriff Award
Ben Luckett, a senior undergraduate RA at AMPERE Lab and also a USP (University Scholar Program) student, is recognized as the receipt of the 2020 Robert L. Cosgriff Award. This award is to recognize an “academically deserving senior undergraduate student, majoring in Electrical Engineering, who signifies his/her intent to pursue graduate studies in Electrical Engineering”. Every year, only one recipient is selected from EE senior undergraduate students by the ECE Department.
Ben has been working on the development of electric aircraft propulsion drive systems since June 2019 under the supervision of Dr. He and Dr. Yuan at AMPERE Lab, and has two papers accepted by the IEEE IPEMC (2020) and IEEE/AIAA EATS-2020 international conferences. This research has been sponsored by NASA-KY EPSCoR.
Congratulations to Ben!
Apr. 29, 2020 -- Trevor Arvin Awarded the Best B.S. Student Presentation in 2020 ECE Research Symposium
Trevor Arvin, an undergraduate RA student with AMPERE Lab and also a USP (University Scholar Program) student, is awarded the Best B.S. Student Presentation in the 2020 UK-ECE Research Symposium. In this virtual Research Symposium, there were 52 research presentations from UK-ECE graduate and undergraudate students. Trevor has been working on the modeling and simulation of fast resonant dc circuit breaker for MVDC applications under the supervision of Dr. He since May 2019, and has two papers accepted by the international conferences, IEEE IPEMC-2020 and ITEC-2020. This research on developing dc circuit breakers has been sponsored by DOE ARPA-E Breaker grant.
Congratulations to Trevor!
Mar. 23, 2020 -- Research and Teaching Activities Moved Online During COVID-19 Outbreak
Starting from Mar 23, 2020, the research and teaching activities with AMPERE Lab will move online, for the sake of all the team members' health and safety. Hopefully, the COVID-19 pandemic will "disappear like a miracle"...?
Jan. 22, 2020 -- AMPERE Members Have Article Published on Top IEEE Journal
A technical article on battery electric vehicle performance evaluation for highway trips based on hybrid physical-stochastic models, by Dr. Xinmei Yuan, Dr. JiangBiao He, et al, has been published by IEEE Industrial Electronics Magzine (IEM, IF=13.241), which ranks 2nd among all IEEE journals in impact factor (https://www.ieee.org/publications/subscriptions/journal-citations.html).
X. Yuan, J. He, S. Li, L. Li, S. Shi and B. He, "Can Electric Vehicles Meet Highway-Trip Requirements?: Exploration of the Real-World Impact on Highway Driving Range Derating," IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 6-19, Dec. 2020.
Dec. 20, 2019 -- AMPERE Lab Celebrates a Successful Year in Bowling Center
Dec. 20, 2019 -- AMPERE group members are celebrating a successful year in a bowling center before the Christmas holiday. Many achievements have been made on research, teaching, education, and service by AMPERERs in 2019.
