Electrical Machines for the More Electric Aircraft: Partial Discharges Investigation

Modern electrical machines employed in transportation applications are required to provide high performance terms of power (and torque) density. At the same time, being these safety-critical, a significant level reliability and/or fault tolerance is expected. Among all factors which can compromise motors reliability, partial discharges (PDs) inception one most crucial, particular for low voltage, random wound machines. This article presents an extensive experimental investigation on PDs aerospace applications. Measurements carried out using both sinusoidal and fast-rising pulses representative environment, emulating typical ambient conditions encountered throughout commercial aircraft mission, beyond (i.e., down 30 mbar). As main result investigation, it proved that actuating primary flight control surfaces feature higher risk inception. Therefore, their insulation system demands extremely careful design.