FPGA-Based Real-Time Simulation of a Three-Stage Energy Conversion System in Electric Aircrafts

This paper proposes a model of a three-stage synchronous generator found in passenger aircrafts for hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing. The system includes two salient-pole synchronous machines, one permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) with their respective resolvers, and encoders models, as well as two full-wave six-pulse AC-DC diode bridge rectifier and one DC-DC buck converter. The efficient combination of pipeline and parallel FPGA hardware design makes it possible to fit the model on a Xilinx Virtex 7 FPGA. The OP5607 real-time simulator of Opal-RT Technologies is used, and simulation time step as low as 250ns is achieved. Three scenarios are investigated understudied: balanced load change, unbalanced load change, and single-phase short-circuit fault, which are validated by Simscape/Power System library of Matlab/Simulink.