Research into developing cryogenic protection devices for superconducting electrical systems is lacking. One of the few investigations was of cryogenic switches in the form of a solid-state circuit breaker (CB). It was reported that these breakers would take up nearly 40% of the superconducting electrical system mass and losses. This article designs a cryogenic switch, free of power electronics, whose conduction loss is only 4.1% of a comparable solid-state CB’s total loss. Protection considerations of a 1-kV/40-MW cryogenic system are referred to validate its application in a superconducting electrical powertrain. The designed cryogenic switch’s dc and ac interrupting ability were verified by experiments to interrupt 750-V/1500-A dc and 1-kV/6.3-kA ac, very close to the dc and ac limits of the proposed 40-MW Center for High Efficiency Electric Aircraft (CHEETA) system. For fault conditions, a noninductive pancake resistive superconducting fault current limiter unit was designed to help with the unacceptable fault current. The 750-V/10-kA prospective current was suppressed to 1.4 kA in 588 $\mu \text{s}$ and interrupted by the switch in 12 ms. Cooperation of the cryogenic switch and superconducting fault current limiter shows potential in dealing with fault currents in future electric aircraft.
A Power-Electronics Free Protection Device for Superconducting Electrical Propulsion Aircraft
IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification ; 8 , 4 ; 4779-4788
2022-12-01
2325272 byte
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Power electronics in electrical propulsion
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