Comparison of Three-Phase Active Rectifiers For Aircraft Application

In aircraft applications, there has been an increasing trend related with the More Electric Aircraft (MEA), which results in rapid rise in the electrical power demand on-board. One of its goals lies in minimizing weight and volume of the electrical subsystem while maintaining good power quality and efficiency. The main purpose of this paper is to present and analyze an electrical design of three-phase Boost rectifier, three-phase Buck rectifier and three-phase Vienna rectifier for 10 kW active rectifiers and compare them in terms of weight, volume, efficiency etc. Moreover, the design is obliged to comply with DO-160 standard for avionic equipment with 230 V AC, 360-800 Hz grid conditions. Even though all proposed solutions satisfy the standard requirements, it will be shown that the Vienna rectifier has the lowest volume and therefore, the better solution overall. However, due to increased number of semiconductors and additional circuitry required for soft start-up, the Buck rectifier would prove to be the safest solution failure-wise