Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

In the era of society integration through the concept of Internet of Things (IoT), there is relentless need for revolutionary power electronic systems. Sound integration of subsystems and services, ranging from smart grid to health organizations to military sites and critical loads, is a must. A key to achieve this is a research program that will introduce an information system back boned by a power circuits designed in a novel way to reduce its cost but keep its reliability up to the standards. This research program represents a multidisciplinary technology that includes but not limited to; power semiconductors, control theory, microcomputers, electrical machine design, and converter circuits with very large scale integration (VLSI) capabilities. An important aspect of the power electronics applications in any society is about the utmost use of electricity. For example, the use of electric cars achieves a greener society; this would have been impossible without power electronic converters. Novel power electronic circuits will be developed, using the most recent advanced semiconductors like Gallium Nitride (GaN), Silicon Carbide (SiC), and hybrid ACCUFETs. The cost of these semiconductors and their associated control circuits is falling with time, while the cost of bulky passive components remains the same. This drives the power electronics engineer to provide a semiconductor based solution rather than a traditional passive solution. An example is the use of GaN converters in electric vehicles as they operate at very high frequencies, which reduces the size of inductors and capacitors; making them lighter and more compact. New semiconductors require driving circuits with reduced energy consumption, which is another merit. The objectives of the program are to: (1) design power electronic circuits for drive applications with new semiconductors; (2) Investigate the use of resonant converters to make the build light and compact; (3) The integration of these drive systems into the IoT will require a novel powering scheme for these backbone communication circuits, namely Power over the Ethernet, (4) Control of power electronic circuits using the state of the art digital controllers, and investigation of fuzzy and neural based controllers, and (5) Design of the so called Hybrid Motors, where mixed laminations from cost effective induction motors are blended carefully into the expensive permanent magnet motors to achieve the utmost cost effectiveness of future motors without degrading its performance. This research program will not only focus on better options for the power drive systems, but also micro controller based processing and fabrication of these new materials, in which the applicant possesses extensive industrial experience. Undoubtedly, this research program will prevail as a futuristic electrical engineering discipline.