Rotating Rectifier Failure Detection for Brushless Synchronous Starter/Generator in the Generator Mode

A novel failure detection method for rotating rectifier of the brushless synchronous starter/generator in the generator mode has been proposed. In this method, the terminal voltage of the idle field winding of the main exciter is used. Firstly, the first maximum voltage and corresponding position in the voltage sample sequence are obtained. On this basis, the voltage sample sequence is reconstructed into two sequences to acquire the second maximum voltage. Then the voltage ratio is calculated for failure detection. Experimental results verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.

I. Introduction

The rapid development of the more electric aircraft has drawn great demand on the integrated starter/generator. In this case, the brushless synchronous starter/generator (BSSG) has become research focus for its mature generator technique together with large-scale application on board. As shown in Fig. 1, the BSSG consists of the pre-exciter (PE), the main exciter (ME), the rotating rectifier and the main machine (MM). The PE is a permanent magnet synchronous machine and the ME is a rotating-armature electrically excited generator with three-phase field windings. The rotating rectifier, mounted on the rotor shaft, is a three-phase full bridge diode rectifier, and a wound-rotor synchronous machine serves as the MM.