On the use of switched-capacitor multi-level inverters for electro-aerodynamic thrust applications

A prototype HV DC-AC power converter was designed and tested for use on the dielectric barrier discharge(DBD) section of a decoupled thruster on an electro-aerodynamic(EAD) thrust plane application. The converter was a switched-capacitor multi-level inverter(SCMLI) capable of generating a variety of AC waveform shapes. The power draw of the DBD and the DC corona discharge current were measured for each waveform at a DBD voltage of 6kVpp and 10kHz, and used to estimate the thrust to DBD power characteristics of each waveform. The estimated thrust to DBD power for a sine wave and sawtooth wave were >76% higher than for a pulse wave, and >19% higher than for a square wave, indicating that a sine or sawtooth wave generating circuit such as a SCMLI may be a good choice for EAD flight applications.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• O'Meara, Suzanne B.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• David J. Perreault.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/130195

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/130195