Control and regulation equipment of electric power system for a prospective piloted transport system

The aim of this work is to consider solving complex of tasks focused on fulfilling the complicated tactical and technical requirements for regulation and monitoring equipment (RME) of electric power supply system (EPS) for a prospective spacecraft. These requirements are imposed due to the need to ensure high reliability of the equipment during operation under the influence of external factors (vacuum, vibro-impact loads, radiation, absence of convective cooling), as well as to achieve high mass-dimensional parameters of the equipment and its high functionality

The complexity of problem solving lies in the need to ensure conflicting requirements – high levels of energy density, weight and size characteristics, reliability and durability.

These problems fully apply to the RME of the EPS for a prospective piloted transport system (PPTS) which design example shows ways of solving abovementioned problems.

The most rational way of solving these contradictions is to increase the specific energy indicators of the main components of the RME devices – power converters, which can be achieved by using modern power electronic elements, using new materials and semi-finished products, for example, printed circuit boards with a metal heat sink, as well as increasing the layout density design.

Determining solution is to select an optimal structure of the power converter, which provides the best efficiency.

An additional way to reduce the mass-dimensional indicators of the RME is the use of a digital control method, the collection of telemetric information, and the receiving and processing of commands.

At the same time, on the contrary, to ensure the specified reliability of the equipment, it is necessary to use excess reservation at the element level – for power components, and the principles of majority reservation at the functional block level – for control and telemetry schemes.

Using the example of RME, developed by CJSC “Orbita”, the main EPS parameters of a new generation spacecraft are shown and most important power supply subsystems are considered in the article: the solar energy control subsystem and the power storage subsystem, ways to build them for meeting specified requirements, taking into account the proposed solutions.

As a result of this work, the optimal structures of power converters – the current regulator of the solar battery and the current regulator of the battery – were selected, the basic principles of power components reservation ensuring the operability of the equipment in case of a single failure of any component without loss of performance and deterioration of RME parameters as a whole are shown.

Block-modular construction method is used for optimal layout and high reliability of the RME, it ensures uniform heat removal from electronic components, which is especially important in vacuum conditions, minimum dimensions and mass optimization of the RME, as well as high mechanical strength of the structure.

The implemented principles of building the RME for PPTS using this approach will allow to increase the active lifetime (ALT) and reliability of the spacecraft with a simultaneous decrease in mass and dimension parameters.