Electrical Power System Robustness

ABSTRACT: Impact Technologies is teaming with Raytheon to develop a methodology and supporting tool to assess and quantify robustness for electrical power systems. Developmental fighter aircraft, unmanned systems, and emerging aerospace systems present challenges to traditional aircraft design whose solutions lay in more electric aircraft (MEA). Electrical power systems (EPS) offer significant weight reduction while reducing apparent complexity presented to aircraft manufacturing and maintenance. Opportunities for improved energy optimization through integration of thermal and power management, combined with weight savings offered by fuel system incorporation into thermal management, present design optimization complexities never experienced before. Capitalizing on the promised benefits of migration from quad and triple redundant hydraulic actuation systems to MEA, emerging fifth generation systems and developmental sixth generation systems are outpacing the ability of traditional reliability assessment tools to predict reliable performance under dynamic conditions. While presenting a clean and simpler system for platform integration and maintainer support, the underlying complexity, abstracted away through extensive utilization of modern solid state electronics and control, embodies many ill-understood variables and high degrees of uncertainty. The proposed robustness assessment and modeling environment leverages multiple facets of design, reliability, and supportability tools to arrive at a robustness metric and improve EPS reliability. BENEFIT: Robustness is not a new term, and strategies for designing robustness into complex systems are employed in multiple industries. Quantifying achieved robustness can support value propositions in a broad array of domains. The potential market within communications, data management, medical, and financial industries illustrates opportunities outside the electrical power system domain. Within the EPS domain, new strategies for robust and efficient building thermal and energy management, along with the emergence of alternative energy as a supplemental strategy to commercial building design, tools for designing in and assessing achieved robustness are required.