Designing a new power electronic conversion system is a multi-step process that requires the R\&D team(s) to go through an extended prototyping phase whose goal is to validate the design in its nominal state, as well as to test its behavior when it is subjected to abnormal conditions. To properly and safely validate all devices that are external to the power stage itself, such as the controllers and the protection systems, one of the best-suited device is a real-time emulator of the converter circuit, a platform that obeys the same mathematical laws and produces the same signals as the original device withoutactually realizing the power conversion. Unfortunately, these models are often based on analog solvers which are difficult to build, must be redesigned for each modification and are subject to drift and aging. While multiple digital real-time emulators have appeared on the market in the last decades, they typically require powerful and expensive computing platforms to perform their calculations or are not generic enough to emulate the more complex power circuits. In this work, we present a new framework that allows the rapid prototyping of a wide range of power converters by translating a power converter schematic drawn on a computer to a real-time equivalent set of equations which is processed by an FPGA with an emulation time-step of less than one microsecond. Contrary to the previously published works, our tools enable the use of entry-level FPGAs even for the emulation circuits composed of twenty switches or more. This framework takes the form of a tool-chain that starts by extracting the necessary information and a standard description from the initial circuit. However, due to the intricate ways in which the switches and diodes can change their state, this raw information is too complex to be processed and emulated directly.Our first major contribution to the state of the art is a way to automatically analyze these changes in order to reduce the complexity of the problem as much as possible while keeping all the necessary information intact. In this thesis, we develop two tools that are able to find all possible changes in the state of the switches that may appear in the immediate future, thereby reducing the quantity of information required to emulate the circuit. Thanks to the global optimization provided by our tools, simulating a typical AC-to-DC converter composed of 12 switches could require 80\% less resources when compared to existing emulators.To enable the emulation or large power converters, we have created a partitioning method which divides the circuit in multiple sub-circuits which are analyzed and optimized separately. The performances of this partitioning are demonstrated by the emulation of a three-phase three-level converter with a relative error of a less that 5% on the signals.To handle our new framework, a dedicated digital platform has been developed. In order to provide the best results even on small FPGAs, particular attention is given to the low resources usage and the low latency of our design. Through multiple examples, we show that this inexpensive real-time emulation platform is able to accurately emulate many circuits in open- or closed-loop operation with a sampling rate higher than 1 MHz / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

L'intégration actuelle des systèmes photovoltaïques dans les systèmes d'alimentation conventionnels a montré une croissance importante, ce qui a favorisé l'expansion rapide des micro-réseaux du terme anglais microgrid. Cette intégration a cependant augmenté la complexité du système d'alimentation qui a conduit à de nouveaux défis de recherche. Certains de ces défis de recherche encouragent le développement d'approches de modélisation innovantes en temps réel capables de faire face à cette complexité croissante. Dans ce contexte, une méthodologie innovante est proposée et basée sur les composants pour la modélisation et l'émulation de systèmes photovoltaïques en temps réel integers aux microgrids. L'approche de modélisation proposée peut utiliser le langage de modélisation des systèmes (SysML) pour décrire la structure et le comportement des systèmes photovoltaïques intégrés en tenant compte de leurs caractéristiques multidisciplinaires. De plus, cette étude présente le cadre de spécification de haut niveau des systèmes embarqués (HiLeS) pour transformer les modèles SysML développés en code source destinés à configurer le matériel intégré. Cette caractéristique de la generation automatique de code permet de profiter de dispositifs avec un haut degré d'adaptabilité et de performances de traitement. Cette méthodologie basée sur HiLeS et SysML est axée sur l'étude des systems photovoltaïques partiellement ombragés ainsi que des architectures flexibles en électronique de puissance en raison de leur influence sur les microgrids actuels. En outre, cette perspective de recherche est utilisée pour évaluer les stratégies de contrôle et de supervision dans les conditions normales et de défauts. Ce travail représente la première étape pour développer une approche innovante en temps réel pour modéliser et émuler des systèmes photovoltaïques complexes en tenant compte des propriétés de modularité, de haut degré d'évolutivité et des conditions de travail non uniformes. Les résultats expérimentaux et analytiques valident la méthodologie proposée. / Nowadays, the integration of photovoltaic systems into electrical grids is encouraging the expansion of microgrids. However, this integration has also increased the power system complexity leading to new research challenges. Some of these research challenges require the development of innovative modeling approaches able to deal with this increasing complexity. Therefore, this thesis is intended to contribute with an innovative methodology component-based for modeling and emulating in real-time photovoltaic systems integrated to microgrids. The proposed modeling approach uses the Systems Modeling Language (SysML) to describe the structure and behavior of integrated photovoltaic systems. In addition, this study presents the High Level Specification of Embedded Systems (HiLeS) to transform automatically the developed SysML models in embedded code and Petri nets. These characteristics of automatic code generation and design based on Petri nets allow taking advantage of FPGAs for application of real-time emulation of photovoltaic systems. This dissertation is focused on partially shaded photovoltaic systems and flexible power electronics architectures because of their relevant influence on current microgrids. Furthermore, this research perspective is intended to evaluate control and supervision strategies in normal and fault conditions. This work represents the first step to develop an innovative real-time approach to model and emulate complex photovoltaic systems considering properties of modularity, high degree of scalability, and non-uniform working conditions. Finally, experimental and analytical results validate the proposed methodology.

Stability and sustainability of operation of interconnected power converter systems has been an important focus of study in the field of power electronics and power systems. With ever-increasing application of electrical machines by means of electrification of vehicles, airplanes and shipboards, detailed study of the relating dynamics is very important to ensure the proper implementation and stable behavior of the overall system. In this work, the application of the black box approach study of the power converters has been expanded to the electrical machines. Using this modeling method, it is possible of have accurate behavior of electrical and mechanical terminals of the machine without the detailed information about the internal structure of the machine, material characteristics or topology of the machine. Instead, accurate model of electrical and mechanical terminals of the machine are achieved by measuring specific frequency responses of the machine to distinguish dynamic relation of the various electrical and mechanical quantities of the machine. The directly measured frequency responses, are coupled with the dynamics of the source and load in the electrical and mechanical terminals of the machine thus in order to decoupled the described couplings a mathematical process is used that results in decoupling of the controller and drive on the electrical side and the dynamics of the mechanical load and mechanical shaft at the mechanical terminal of the machine. Resulting model is the linear time invariant representation of the electrical machine at a specific operating point. Additionally, this work represents the application of this modeling method for accurate measurement of internal parameters of the machine such as inductances and mechanical inertia and characterization of the mechanical shaft coupler. Resulting unterminated model of the machine is a very important matter of information for system integrators and electrical and mechanical designs related to the application of the machine, to ensure the stable and sustainable operation of the machine. This work for the first time, represents the experimental implementation of this terminal behavioral modeling method for studying electrical machines as well as describes some of the practical limitations of this methodology. By incorporating and integrating a combination of commercially available devices such as frequency response analyzer, Hardware-In-The-Loop (HIL), Power-Hardware-In-The-Loop (PHIL), a test setup has been developed that is capable of control, operate and study arbitrary frame small-signal related measurements required for terminal behavioral study of the electrical machines. Resulting model of the machine that has been extracted from this modeling method is then used to compare in time domain with the real machine in the case of transient change in the mechanical load on the shaft to discover the validity of this modeling procedure. / Master of Science / According to the data from the International Energy Agency, around half of the electricity used globally is consumed by electric motors. Moreover, the growth in the electrical vehicle industry will increase their application even further, hence the development of high-fidelity models of electric machines for real-time emulation, system-level analyses, and stability studies still stands out as an important and needed research focus. New modeling concepts that go beyond the standard industry practice can be used at the design and integration stage to ensure the stable behavior of the overall system. Furthermore, convenient testing and identification pressures can help ensure the long-term operation of the system. Aligned with this trend, this thesis is studying permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSM) using small-signal terminal-behavioral three-port networks. Having such a behavioral model of the machine available provides many opportunities for system integrators, and even enables an in-situ system observation and stability assessment at both the machine's electrical and mechanical interfaces. This capability can undoubtedly be of high importance in practice, as it is offering new insights into dynamic interactions of the electro-mechanical systems, the governor or turbine control design in ships, aircrafts, electrical vehicles, and even large synchronous machines in power plants. A so-called characterization testbed has been built that combines Hardware-In-The-Loop (HIL) and Power-Hardware-In-The-Loop (PHIL) environments, with sensor-interface boards that are used to properly scale measured signals for machine control. The Frequency-Response-Analyzer is used to sweep the proper electrical or mechanical terminal of the machine by perturbing the proper control signal within the machine controller running in PHIL and reading d-q currents, voltages, torque, and speed variables whose dynamic ratios are then obtained without the need for interrupting the normal operation of the electrical machine. The capability of acquiring such a detailed model of the machine while the machine is in operation is an important benefit of this modeling method, in comparison to the conventional identification methods widely applied in the industry. The resulting model is a linearized time invariant representation of the electrical machine at a specific operating point of interest, and can be used by system integrators to ensure the stability of the system using well known stability assessment methodologies. Furthermore, this modeling strategy has been experimentally verified for the first time on electrical machines, and the resulting model has been compared with the transient behavior of the machine in the presence of a step change in the mechanical load of the machine.

Design space exploration (DSE) is used to improve and understand engineering designs. Such designs must meet objectives and structural requirements. Design improvement is non-trivial and requires new DSE methods. Turbomachinery manufacturers must continue to improve existing engines to keep up with global demand. Two challenges of turbomachinery DSE are: the time required to evaluate designs, and knowing which designs to evaluate. This research addressed these challenges by developing novel surrogate and principal component analysis (PCA) based DSE methods. Node and PCA-based surrogates were created to allow faster DSE of turbomachinery blades. The surrogates provided static stress estimation within 10% error. Surrogate error was related to the number of sampled finite element (FE) models used to train the surrogate and the variables used to change the designs. Surrogates were able to provide structural evaluations three to five orders of magnitude faster than FEA evaluations. The PCA-based surrogates were then used to create a PCA-based design workflow to help designers know which designs to evaluate. The workflow used either two-point correlation or stress and geometry coupling to relate the design variables to principal component (PC) scores. These scores were projections of the FE models onto the PCs obtained from PCA. Analysis showed that this workflow could be used in DSE to better explore and improve designs. The surrogate methods were then applied to vibratory stress. A computationally simplified analysis workflow was developed to allow for enough fluid and structural analyses to create a surrogate model. The simplified analysis workflow introduced 10% error but decreased the computational cost by 90%. The surrogate methods could not directly be applied to emulation of vibration due to the large spikes which occur near resonance. A novel, indirect emulation method was developed to better estimate vibratory responses Surrogates were used to estimate the inputs to calculate the vibratory responses. During DSE these estimations were used to calculate the vibratory responses. This method reduced the error between the surrogate and FEA from 85% to 17%. Lastly, a PCA-based multi-fidelity surrogate method was developed. This assumed the PCs of the high and low-fidelities were similar. The high-fidelity FE models had tens of thousands of nodes and the low-fidelity FE models had a few hundred nodes. The computational cost to create the surrogate was decreased by 75% for the same errors. For the same computational cost, the error was reduced by 50%. Together, the methods developed in this research were shown to decrease the cost of evaluating the structural responses of turbomachinery blade designs. They also provided a method to help the designer understand which designs to explore. This research paves the way for better, and more thoroughly understood turbomachinery blade designs.