DIRECT TO PHASE II: Development of Customized Aerospace Lightweight, High Power, High Frequency Bandwidth, Nanocrystalline EMI Filters

The U.S. Navy is embarking on opportunities for increased aerospace platform electrification to meet its unique demands on aircraft power and propulsion systems which drives a significant need for increased power density and high temperature components. A key enabler is wide bandgap (WBG) device-based power conversion. These technologies bring significant benefits to improving fielded aerospace electrical power system challenges while also driving towards new advanced platform capabilities. However, they also bring a new set of significant challenges, namely electromagnetic interference (EMI) and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) which, if not mitigated properly, may lead to avionics or mission system degradation jeopardizing the platform’s warfighting mission readiness. Nanocrystalline materials are an emerging technology that provide opportunity to bring significant weight savings to common mode (CM) inductors due to its high saturation flux density, high temperature capability, and low core losses. While existing COTS nanocrystalline magnetic cores have mainly focused on high power, low frequency (i.e., industrial drives) or low power, high frequency (i.e., radio frequency system) applications, the Navy requires high power and high frequency bandwidth nanocrystalline cores to achieve desired filter attenuation performance and power density requirements for military aerospace applications. In many cases, the components required for these aerospace applications (e.g., tactical fighter aircraft or future hybrid electric/fully electric aircraft) differ significantly from existing COTS components required for commercial electric vehicle markets due to the higher power, increased power density, and more stringent EMI requirements in the military aerospace environment. This topic is focused on maturation of the materials and components to enable development of system level filter hardware solutions that are reliable and maintain high performance response for military aerospace applications, with option for commercial use, as documented in DO-160 and MIL-STD-461 for EMI performance. The solution should demonstrate a greater than 50% weight reduction compared to commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) CMVC filters and inductor components through the development and use of customized high power and high frequency bandwidth nanocrystalline core materials.