Tools for partial discharge and health condition inference in aerospace electrical asset components

Abstract

Challenges in aerospace are so numerous that the electrical insulation aspect may be not perceived as a major problem, but it should not be. Increasing specific power, going towards electrification and improving efficiency have all to do with power electronics components and rising voltage and temperature, thus electrical and thermal stresses if volume and weight are an issue (as they are indeed). This paper indicated tracks towards facing problems that power electronics supply and higher electrical and thermal stress can cause to insulation system reliability for any electrical asset components in flying and ground aerospace installations. Specifically, manufacturing and performance of a power electronic generator, pulse-width modulated, able to test electrical systems in lab under real voltage waveforms and temperature, is described. Generator parameters, as modulation and carrier frequency, switch slew rate, number of inverter levels, can be adjusted case by case, depending on the solutions used on a specific aerospace electrical asset. The second topic is driving through partial discharge (PD) measurements under such voltage waveforms, with PD pulses that can be easily hidden by switching noise and so fast voltage impulse rise time that frequency-based filtering is not feasible. The time-based partial discharge extraction presented here is innovative, automatic and it could work in a broader analytics contest where partial discharges are separated from noise and the type of source generating them identified. Indeed, identification would be a must, whether insulation system design or diagnostics have to rely upon the absence of partial discharge phenomena or remedies in case they incept due to aging.