|
This project develops a standard, high-power, wide-bandwidth electrical power interface to the Virtual Test Bed to support the incremental virtual prototyping process for power systems. The interface will use ultra-high-switching-speed, ultra-low-resistance, sheet-conducting, gallium nitride power switches. Three technologies are key to this project; the University of South Carolina is the world leader in two of those technologies -- virtual prototyping of dynamic systems and gallium nitride microelectronics --and our partner F&H is a leader in the third technology, the SimStim interface.
This work leverages substantial prior investments to expand the range of capabilities available to the ship design community (and to the power systems community in general).
General scheme of the project
The problem we are solving is obvious when one considers that the most sophisticated extant means for advancing from a simulation model to real hardware is only to gather up all of one’s faith and take a great leap. There exists no general purpose capability to interface the virtual prototype of a system to some portion of the system that already exists as real hardware. The purpose of the work is to build the first version of a wide-bandwidth, frequency-agile power interface that can sit between a simulation environment and real electrical hardware.
HFET Driver layout design. Double sided copper clad PCB
The significant challenge in creating such an interface is to provide the wide dynamic range and low latency that are required to track not just a sinusoidal power waveform, but rather a heavily distorted waveform having all of the warts and bumps associated with a harmonic rich environment. These are the extreme conditions under which real hardware is prone to fail, and these are the conditions under which the assumptions in simulation models most often collapse to reveal deficiencies in the system design. Hence it is under these conditions that the value of incremental virtual prototyping is realized and under these conditions that the interface must work. (Incremental virtual prototyping: the process of incremental substitution of real hardware for simulation models as the individual parts of hardware become available).
HFET Driver
Silicon technology is incapable of meeting the extreme switching demands of such a power interface. Gallium nitride technology is suitable for this application, but even worldwide, very few organizations are capable of developing the necessary gallium nitride switching devices. Our team commands all of the technologies needed for all aspects of this program. It has the greatest ability to fabricate GaN power devices, it has already developed the most advanced virtual prototyping environment, it understands the requirements for interfacing the virtual prototyping environment to an electric plant, and it has the immense expertise in power electronics and controls needed to competently integrate the parts into a useful realization of the technology.
Design layout for the HFET Bridge
