Hardware-in-the-loop simulation for aircraft electrical systems on multiple FPGAs

Verification and validation of the performance and reliability of power electronic systems is critical to the development of more-electric, electric and hybrid aircraft. Ensuring that power quality is maintained in a range of operational and fault conditions is essential, but testing to do so is technically challenging, time-consuming and expensive. Simulation-based validation of power electronic systems is computationally demanding and can take large amounts of time. This presentation describes the use of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to accelerate power electronic simulation via parallel computation, using tools that only require a basic level of FPGA expertise.