Protection Devices for Aircraft Electrical Power Distribution Systems: State of the Art

The development of all electric aircraft (AEC) has provided new opportunities in the field of electronic devices and power electronics. One of the most interesting areas is focused on the protection devices field and the management of the loads by means of the solid state power controllers (SSPC). This is mainly due to the great increase of these devices in the electrical power distribution system architectures used in the new airplanes such as A380 and B787. This paper presents a survey of conventional and future trends of protection devices in onboard platforms. Moreover a virtual test bench is developed in order to analyze the potential problems that could appear by using SSPC in new onboard platforms. In addition an experimental validation with commercial SSPC and its model are presented.