1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to systems and methods for analyzing the stability of electrical power systems. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to a system and method for generating impedance data for an electrical power system and using the impedance data to optimize the stability of the electrical power system.
2. Background
Aircraft may employ various electronic devices and systems for performing various functions on the aircraft. Power for the electronic devices and systems on an aircraft may be provided by an aircraft electrical power system. The aircraft electrical power system may include a number of generators along with various power distribution and conversion systems. For example, the electrical power system on an aircraft may include a number of generators driven by the aircraft engines.
The stability of an electrical power system may be defined as the ability of the system to regain a normal state of equilibrium after being subjected to a disturbance. It is desirable that an electrical power system on an aircraft may be designed for stability.
Many of the electrical loads on an aircraft may use regulated power electronics in order to improve efficiency, power quality, and power density. Such electrical loads may affect the stability of the electrical power system on an aircraft in undesired ways.
It may be desirable to optimize the electrical power system on an aircraft to ensure stability in the power efficiency, density and quality. Furthermore, failure to optimize the electrical power systems on aircraft may increase costs. Less than optimal power systems may be overdesigned, heavier, and have larger volumetric stowage requirements. Therefore, aircraft equipped with such less than optimal power systems may use more fuel during operation. In this era of ever increasing fuel costs, having solutions that address this problem have become even more important. Similarly, less than optimal power systems may require more frequent maintenance and components of such systems may need to be repaired and replaced more often. Therefore, such systems may have higher lifecycle costs.
Optimizing the stability of the electrical power system on an aircraft may present several technical problems. A first technical problem may be the problem of characterizing the stability profiles of numerous possible electrical power system designs in order to identify an optimal electrical power system for an aircraft. A second technical problem may be the problem of accurately characterizing the stability profile of an electrical power system in order to accurately identify a stable electrical power system for an aircraft. A third technical problem may be the problem of simultaneously solving the first technical problem and the second technical problem in a manner such that the stability profiles of numerous possible electrical power system designs may be characterized efficiently without sacrificing the accuracy of such characterizations.
Currently available systems and methods for analyzing the stability of electrical power system designs may be limited and may not provide solutions to the technical problem of optimizing the stability of an electrical power system on an aircraft. The analysis of the stability of an electrical power system may be performed only partially by current commercially available simulation software. For example, some currently available simulation software products may only be able to identify the direct current impedance of direct current to direct current converters. Other currently available simulation software products may be able to identify alternating current impedance of a system, but only under some specific assumptions and limitations. For example, some simulation software products may be able to identify alternating current impedance under the assumption of balanced line voltages and with prior knowledge of system frequency. Such a simulation software product may also require injecting a sinusoidal component into the simulation for each frequency where impedances are identified.
Current approaches may not integrate stability analysis methods and may lack a general and comprehensive approach to stability analysis. For example, current approaches may require fine tuning of several parameters for each specific case. Another drawback of current approaches may be the need for extensive manual data extraction by a user from simulation models based on various user judgments.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial to have a method and apparatus that takes into account one or more of the issues discussed above as well as possibly other issues.