Technologies for More Electric Aircraft

Technologies for More Electric Aircraft
by Dr. Amit Gupta

At Rolls-Royce, our vision is to be the market-leader in high performance power systems where our engineering expertise, global reach and deep industry knowledge deliver outstanding customer relationships and solutions. We operate across five businesses: Civil Aerospace, Defence Aerospace, Power Systems, Marine and Nuclear.

In 2015, Rolls-Royce invested £1.2 billion on research and development. We also support a global network of 31 University Technology Centres, which position our engineers at the forefront of scientific research.

In Singapore our Applied Technology Group (ATG) is an important part of our R&D investment, developing advanced technologies to support core business areas. These include research of materials support technology, computational engineering, electrical power and control systems and manufacturing technology.

The power electronic converters and electrical machines play a critical role in modern aircraft. Power density, reliability, weight, volume and fault tolerance are of key importance for aerospace related electrical machines and drives. Adopting electrical machine drive systems in More Electric Architecture (MEA) eliminate hydraulic, pneumatic and gearbox driven subsystems; resulting in reduced overall aircraft weight, increased reliability, significant cost reduction due to fewer parts, reduced fuel consumption and maintenance. Technologies for aircraft of the future will be presented.