The growing demands for electrical capacity on future more electric aircraft (MEA) has led the engine-based generators to increase in size. Many manufacturers and researchers have a strong interest in developing fuel cells for aerospace applications due to their advantage of high efficiency and their use as a medium for clean energy resources. A particular interest is in using fuel cells within the Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) - a function that is currently provided by an additional gas turbine in most aircraft. Their integration into aircraft systems is not straightforward. A particular challenge, which this thesis addresses, is the provision of a suitable power conversion system which is able to interface the fuel cell to the aircraft electrical system – taking account of the complex electrical characteristics of the fuel cell and the demanding requirements of the aircraft electrical network. The interleaved boost converter with coupled inductors (IBCI) is one of the many converters that is promising for fuel cell applications because it has low input current ripple and a high step-up voltage gain. It comprises a current doubler circuit, voltage doubler rectifier, coupled inductor and active clamp. The proposed converter is an extended version of the single phase to multiphase IBCI converter using interleaving techniques. The input stage of the converter is a coupled inductor which connected to a half-bridge configuration and an active clamp. The output side is a voltage doubler rectifier. A detailed analysis of the converter and associated modelling are presented. The design and construction of a prototype converter is presented with a particular focus on ensuring operability of the converter over the entire fuel cell characteristic range as well as achieving high efficiency at nominal load. A laboratory-scale (1/10) prototype of a nominal full-scale converter was built to verify the feasibility of the proposed converter topology. Good agreement between the experimental results and the simulation results has been demonstrated, which validates the converter design, modelling, and effectiveness of the efficiency evaluation approximations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:748353 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Shih Chieh, Lai |
| Publisher | University of Nottingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/50188/ |
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