Empirical Systems Aerospace (ESAero) proposes to evaluate and design a traction inverter for megawatt-class aerospace applications. A specific weight reduction of 2- to 3-fold, and improved efficiency, with respect to the current state of the art, are desired. Specifically, the solicitation calls for the development of aircraft traction inverters operating in the 1,000- to 3,000V range at 500 to 2,000 A. Further target specifications include a specific power of 20 kW/kG, and an efficiency of 99.5% at full scale. With the level of analysis and design variation that come with increasing the scale of aircraft-grade inverters, ESAero proposes to conduct a trade study on component and subsystem selection, design, and creating a Bill of Materials for a 1,000-1,200V traction inverter with specifications of for fixed-wing and rotorcraft applications. This project aims to bring the technology to a readiness level between 3 and 4, preparing it for prototype design and fabrication in later work. The proposed project will focus on meeting the following specifications based on subtopic A1.04 Anticipated
Benefits: The proposed traction inverter is applicable to all high-power electric propulsion based aircraft for NASA applications. The full-scale technical targets are to reach All-Electric Megawatt-Class Vehicles and could be designed to fit with SUSAN in a future effort. ESAero has identified that a traction inverter is applicable for use in advanced air mobility passenger vehicles as well as large unmanned air vehicles based on multi-rotor electric propulsion architecture.
