Topology design of the battery management system in electric airplane application

Abstract

Battery Management Systems (BMS) are becoming increasingly common in a variety of applications, including electric airplanes, microgrids, and Electric Vehicles (EV). As technology advances, there are more devices and equipment that draw a large amount of power. Therefore, a BMS is required to monitor the system in order to ensure a safer operation. Usually, to achieve such a large amount of power, Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) and a good semiconductor material like Silicon (Si) are used. For Si switches, it is usually fabricated as Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (MOSFET). Although Si MOSFETs can maintain high efficiency in high switching frequency, they have now reached their limits. With high efficiency and high power density, Gallium Nitride (GaN) semiconductors have emerged and are on the rise over recent years. GaN’s ability to achieve better efficiency, operating at a higher frequency while maintaining high performance makes it an ideal switch compared to Si. This proposal would concentrate on how to develop a suitable BMS in an electric airplane application using GaN-based power devices to achieve high reliability, high quality, and high-capacity system. This research topic was carried out with the support and collaboration from Rolls-Royce @ NTU Corporate Lab (EPSIL@N lab).