Real-Time Simulation of a More Electric Aircraft Power Generation and Distribution System

More Electric Aircraft (MEA) technology is leading aircraft manufacturers to replace traditional hydraulic and pneumatic systems by electrical components, resulting in weight and maintenance cost reduction, and in the increase of Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF). This has for effect of increasing the complexity of the Electrical Power Generation and Distribution System (EPGDS) of the aircraft and degrading its power quality. As a result, testing and validation must be performed early in the design stages, which has traditionally been done via the use of physical testbeds which involve significant amount of hardware. However, because of the electrical nature of MEA, virtual testbeds are now increasingly used, which offer greater flexibility and are less costly than conventional testbeds. As such, OPAL-RT is developing real-time simulators that integrate MEA systems models into a real-time co-simulation platform. This paper provides simulation results that showcase OPAL-RT's real-time simulation capabilities in the context of EPGDS simulation, applied to a generic example inspired from public domain publication regarding the Boeing 787 EPGDS.