1.5kV, 1MVA Inverters for Electric Aircraft Applications: A Mission Profile-Based Comparative Study

As the energy crisis and environmental issues intensify, the electric aircraft has become promising as a form of future transportation for its low-emission and eco-friendly features. In electric aircraft propulsion systems, with increasing voltage and power levels, multilevel inverters are considered to be superior alternatives to traditional 2-level inverters. In this paper, a methodology is proposed to compare the performance of different inverter topologies, i.e., 3-level active neutral point clamped (ANPC), 3-level T-type, and 2-level inverter, for a 1MVA, 1.5kV electric aircraft propulsion system. The critical indices, including efficiency, current total harmonic distortion (THD), reliability, weights and costs of the inverters, are evaluated based on a typical mission profile of a single-aisle aircraft. Comparison results justify the advantages of applying multilevel topologies for targeted applications and provide a reference for future aerospace inverter design based on multiple criteria.