A multi-phase multilevel powertrain for full electric aircraft

Multi-phase AC drives have gained interest and popularity in the research field of full-electric aircraft (FEA). Without excessive complication, they improve highly relevant aspects of the drive including fault-tolerance, which is crucial for air transportation. In this paper, a novel concept is proposed for the electric propulsion system for the aircraft, combining the redundancy of a six-phase Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor with the modularity of multilevel cascaded H-bridge converters. The proposed system increases the flexibility, performance, and reliability of the electric power train. A mathematical model of the drive has been set up and some simulations exploiting different operating modes have been successfully carried reporting the main results in this paper.