A Flexible DC–DC Converter with Multi-Directional Power Flow Capabilities for Power Management and Delivery Module in a Hybrid Electric Aircraft

Abstract

The development of fully electric and hybrid electric aircraft using fuel cells and batteries has lately received much attention since the technology can contribute to achieving an emission-free world. For hybridisation of fuel cells and batteries, the challenge of integrating different voltage sources to supply power to different loads at different voltage levels has to be met. Presently, this is achieved by using a combination of complex passive circuitry and DC–DC converters. In this paper, a new galvanically isolated DC–DC converter topology is proposed; it integrates a battery and fuel cells as input sources and supplies power to a high voltage (HV) and a low voltage (LV) load simultaneously. The converter enables power flow from the sources to the load, as well as between the sources and power flow back towards the battery during recuperation for recharging the battery during flight. The functionality of the converter design is verified using a real-time (RT) hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) test. The proposed concept is easily scalable and can be adopted in any fuel cell and battery drive train of all-electric flights of different sizes.