Fault-Tolerant, Environment-Control and Life-Support System

This program creates an improved, environmentally-compatible technology for the design and implementation of self-testing, fault-tolerant environmental control and life support systems (EC/LSS) for commercial aircraft. The resulting hardware removes the need for engine bleed air presently used for these functions, thereby helping to eliminate a problem in the use of new high- bypass jet engine designs. This development builds on new NASA motor/control/power-processor technology for Electro-Mechanical Actuators (EMA's). That technology is used to design a variable-speed, induction motor driven, heat pump based cooling and heating system, with the variable speed outputs required for environmentally-compatible, HFC-based working fluids. The use of induction motors allows for performance improvements over the traditional DC or brushless DC motor approaches, and also allows the developed technology to be Dual Use, and apply to the large numbers of induction motors in commercial and consumer products.