Why aircraft electric power analysis?

Aircraft Electric Power analysis has become more critical than ever: 

• Already high complexity in classic aircrafts, with engine-driven generators, Auxiliary Power Unit (APU), power converters, electric galleys, DC network, primary and secondary flight control systems (ailerons, elevator, rudder, flaps and spoilers), to passenger comfort systems.

• Many electrical protection and safety systems, such as emergency power supplies, circuit breakers, and de-icing systems.

• Transition towards electric actuators reducing weight, improving efficiency, and enhance maintainability, for various operations (e.g., flight controls, landing gear, folded wing tips, etc.).

• Electric taxiing reducing cost, CO2, and noise on ground level.

• Hybrid-Electric and turbo-electric propulsion on the rise.

• Liquid hydrogen (LH2) tanks and Fuel Cells (FC) as power source.

• Pure Electric Aircraft (EA) - Advance Air Mobility (AAM), Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL), Urban Air Mobility (UAM) or Air Taxis (AT), with full electric propulsion, high number of electric motors, and high-performance traction batteries.

• Electrical power systems with >800 V DC and 400 V / 400 Hz AC microgrid, reducing weight. 

• Rise of electric Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) and drones (eVTOLs).

Global leaders trust Dewesoft for advanced and precise dynamic and static electrical power analysis in the aircraft industry. Our solutions are used to test single components, complex electric propulsion, complete electric setups (all copper) including the aircraft’s microgrid power quality. These tests ensure reliability, performance, efficiency, safety, resilience, and compliance to standards - critical for successful type certification.

Aircraft Electric Power Distribution and Quality

The classic aircraft electric setup and microgrid grid builds up on power generation, power conversion (AC/DC, DC/DC, DC/AC), power distribution and devices (actuators, electronics, avionics), and electric propulsion comes in. 

The electric power network typically builds up on

• DC nominal voltage of 28 V (standard), 270 V or up to 800 V (EV).

• AC nominal voltage of 115 V, 230 V or 400 V (line-to-neutral) with 400 or 800 Hz nominal or even Variable Frequency AC (VFAC): 360–800 Hz.

All states need to be validated

• Normal operation, abnormal operation, emergency, starting, transfer, power failure.

• Challenges are abnormal, transients, and fault conditions. looking at inrush currents, voltage sags/dips, interruption, switching transients, abnormal frequency/voltage.

• Harmonic analysis, THD, orders of harmonics (up to 100 orders, 5 MHz), spectrum range.

Compliance to standards analysing AC

• AC voltage as RMS, phase to neutral value for each half cycle.

• Steady state AC voltage.

• Voltage unbalance, voltage modulation amplitude, voltage phase difference.

Compliance to standards analysing DC

• Steady state DC voltage and current.

• DC Voltage distortion factor and ripple amplitude.

• DC current distortion factor and modulation amplitude.

Aircraft Electric Propulsion Testing

Dewesoft is the right choice for full electric propulsion testing, and specifically electric motor and battery testing. Our high-precision, all-in-one data acquisition solutions deliver accurate efficiency, power, and dynamic performance measurements, paired with isolated multi-physics inputs. This is perfectly tailored for R&D lab and in-flight testing, ensuring engineers gain deeper insights, faster, with absolute confidence.

Electrical propulsion systems

Fully electrified propulsion systems have numerous configurations, but basically consist of:

• Energy storage system (here battery, Fuel Cell + battery)

• PDU (power distribution unit)

• PCU (propulsion control units / inverter / power electronics / motor control)

• Electric motors / engines with propellers (for example open rotor type)

Users need a scalable measurement and testing solution for electric power analysis of 3- or 6-phase high-power AC motors, driven by a wide range of Pulse Width Modulated (PWM) frequency signals up to 100kHz including vector-control parameters.

Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors (PMSMs) are the dominant choice for electric aircraft due to their high efficiency (~95–98%) and power density. Most aircraft PMSMs use 3-phase designs (standard for high-power applications), because of its simplicity & maturity. It is well-understood and compatible with standard inverters.  

Some advanced or fault-tolerant systems use 6-phase for redundancy and fault tolerance - e.g. NASA X-57 Maxwell with 60 kW per PMSM in a distributed propulsion system.

Typical Datasheet of a PMSM:

• Power Output: 200 kW … 2 MW, 650 kW (continuous)  

• Voltage: 300 V … 800 V DC  

• Efficiency: 95–98%

• Power Density: 5–10 kW/kg (~8 kW/kg in Magni650)  

• Cooling: Liquid-cooled (air-cooled for small UAVs)  

• Poles: 8–16 poles (high pole count for compact design) 

• Phase Configuration: 3-phase (6-phase for redundancy) 

• Torque Density: 15–25 Nm/kg, ~20 Nm/kg

• Max RPM: 2,000–3,500 RPM (often geared) | 2,500 RPM

Dewesoft DAQ hardware for aircraft electric power testing

Main benefits of Dewesoft power analyzers and data acquisition systems:

• Scaling up to hundreds of channels testing full-scale electrical setups.

• Highly accurate voltage and current measurement with low signal distortion and high phase accuracy, paired with electrically safe and isolated design (ISO 61010), low temperature drift → traceable results, naming measurement uncertainty (PTB, NIST).

• Direct voltage inputs from mV to 2000 V.

• Full measurement chain including own highly-precise current transducers (CT), covering DC to high‑frequency electrical currents + sensor supply,  alternatively (3rd party CTs, clamps, Rogowski, shunt).

• High quality frequency based power analysis (0.03%) that can scale from single motor to all elements in micro grid (P, Q, S, PF, cos phi, distortion, harmonic distortion, reactive power of harmonics for each phase and total.

• High-speed 15 MS/s/channel and 5 MHz bandwidth, covering accurate power calculation, wide-range harmonics analysis (64th order), and acquisition of transients (glitches, extreme switching, fault transients, or short circuits).

• Support of multi-physics inputs with DC power, rotational speed, torque, temperature (stator, rotor), vibration, noise / acoustics, flow, force, strain, displacement, pressure - supporting TEDS.

• Super counter for high speed torque and rotational speed sensing.

• Various time synchronization options: Ethernet PTPv2 (IEEE1588:2008), GNSS, IRIG, optical Ethernet links.

• Open and easy to integrate into your system integrator of choice: EtherCAT, Ethernet / openDAQ, CAN FD, OPC UA, MQTT, etc.

• Robust and portable instrument for Flight Test Instrumentation (FTI).

Dewesoft SIRIUS and SIRIUS XHS power analyzers are reliable DAQ solutions that covers the modern multi-physics testing approach, delivering electric power, efficiency, thermal integrity, vibration, acoustics, structural durability, software functionality, safety, that reduces testing time and cost.

Learn more about our power analyzers.