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The single-bus dc electrical power system is a promising architecture for more electric aircraft. However, the high penetration of the constant power loads (CPLs) will seriously threaten the system stability. To this end, in this article, a novel model predictive control (MPC) is proposed to eliminate the destabilizing effects of CPLs and optimize the transient performance of the electrical power systems over a wide operating range. First, a state coordinate system is introduced to obtain a canonical form model, and the newly defined output state is disturbed by load power and system uncertainties. Then, the finite-time disturbance observers are utilized to estimate the dynamic load power and system uncertainties. Second, the estimated values are integrated into MPC to regulate the output state to its reference value. By solving the optimization problem offline, a continuous-time MPC scheme is obtained explicitly. Besides, different from the existing MPC schemes that make system states converge to equilibrium points in infinite time, the concept of reference trajectory in the discrete-time MPC schemes is introduced into the continuous-time MPC framework for the first time, and a new second-order reference trajectory with terminal attractor is proposed, yields a finite-time MPC law. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed MPC scheme is verified by experimental tests.

The controller hardware-in-the-loop (CHIL) simulation is a vital tool to test power electronics controllers in the early development stages to reduce cost and risk and save time. However, the CHIL cannot handle the high-switching-frequency power converters due to the strict computing time constraint imposed on the real-time simulation and the limitation of the digital-analog conversion rate of the I/O interface. To deal with this challenge, in this article, a CHIL testing approach based on the slower-than-real-time simulation (STRTS) is proposed for the power electronics converter with high switching frequency. The operating principles and implementation procedure of the STRTS-based CHIL are presented in detail. By comparing with the real-time simulation-based hardware-in-the-loop (HIL), STRTS-based CHIL is proved to have equivalent controller testing performances. Moreover, a 200 kHz buck converter prototype is developed and the closed-loop experimental results validate the feasibility and application values of the STRTS-based CHIL in testing the high-frequency converters.

The power converter plays a crucial role in energy conversion systems, while advanced control algorithms can help stabilize the bus voltage and match the power demand. In this work, a novel fast terminal sliding mode control is proposed for boost converters to strengthen the disturbance rejection ability. First, a full-order sliding mode manifold is proposed to guarantee the finite-time convergence of system states, and an integral-type switching control law is proposed to deal with large disturbances. Second, the disturbance estimation method is used to identify the system uncertainties and theoretical analysis indicates that it can further enhance the robustness and reduce the chattering. Third, a parameter update mechanism is developed to calculate the model parameters at the current operating point, which contributes to improving the control performance and flexibility in different working conditions. Finally, simulation and experimental tests are conducted to verify the proposed method.

The dc–dc converter is a crucial component in energy conversion system. However, designing an advanced controller for the dc–dc converter to maintain satisfactory control performance is challenging due to its inherent nonlinearity, internal uncertainty, and external disturbance. Although active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) method is a promising solution, its control ability still needs enhancement due to the limitation of the linear extended state observer (LESO). Therefore, this article tries to propose an adaptive ADRC by introducing an additional regulation law of ${{\bm{b}}}_0$, which is a coefficient of the conventional ADRC. When compared to the conventional ADRC, the proposed adaptive ADRC can effectively eliminate the system steady-state error caused by time-varying disturbances, improving the static performance of the closed-loop system. Besides, the estimation burden of LESO can be greatly reduced, leading to improved dynamic performance of the closed-loop system. The proposed adaptive ADRC method is validated on a dc–dc floating interleaved boost converter, and both simulation and experimental results demonstrate that it outperforms the conventional ADRC method and other adaptive ADRC method in terms of steady-state and dynamic performance.

Model predictive control (MPC) has great potential in PMSM drives due to the advantages of fast dynamic response and multi-variable control. However, due to its exponentially increasing computational load and a large number of online calculations, it greatly increases the computational complexity and resource consumption of the microcontroller. Therefore, overcoming the barriers of computational burden has become a key point for the large-scale application of MPC strategies. This article proposed a novel virtual MPC-based artificial neural network controller (ANN-MPC) for PMSM drives in aviation electric actuators, to reduce computational burden and improve the system control performance. Firstly, a traditional MPC controller is designed under circuit simulation to generate the input and output data for training. Next, the design of the ANN-MPC controller is trained offline with massive training datasets. The ANN-MPC controller replaces the heavy online calculation of the MPC controller through simple mathematical expressions, so the ANN-MPC controller significantly reduces the computational burden and resource consumption. Moreover, the simulation and experimental results reveal that the proposed ANN-MPC controller has an approximate control performance compared to the conventional MPC controller.

The powerful control ability of the active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) method has attracted much attention from both the academic and industrial communities. This method successfully inherits the advantages of the conventional proportional integration (PI) control method, such as error-driven way, simple structure, and low design complexity. In addition, it also absorbs the observer technique from modern control theory. All these factors make the ADRC method show a big potential to be widely adopted in practical industrial applications. To facilitate this development trend, in this work, some advancements of ADRC are discussed in detail, and three typical applications in the power electronics field are briefly introduced, such that the engineers can have a more intuitive understanding of this method and the academics could recognize some topics that still need to be further researched.