Georgi Atanasov is a researcher at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), working within the Institute of System Architectures in the Department for Aircraft Design and System Integration. He holds a Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Technical University of Munich, which he completed in 2012.
Following his studies, he spent six years supporting the Overall Aircraft Design department of the Airbus Future Projects Office as a subcontractor, focusing on conceptual and preliminary design with a particular emphasis on hybrid propulsion systems.
Since 2018, Georgi has been driving research at DLR in the field of overall aircraft design. His work is centred around sustainable aircraft concepts, with hybrid-electric propulsion continuing to play a key role in his projects.
A Radical Regional Aircraft Concept in IMOTHEP: Lessons Learned in Propulsion System Architecture and Integration
This keynote presents central insights from the development of a radical regional aircraft concept within the European Horizon 2020 project IMOTHEP, focusing on the challenges and solutions in propulsion system architecture and integration. The concept, known as REG-RAD, features a plug-in hybrid-electric powertrain and a distributed propulsion system tailored for regional missions, aiming to substantially reduce emissions while meeting realistic performance and operational requirements.
The talk describes the concept and outlines the methodological approach adopted to design and evaluate the propulsion architecture, including electric propulsion components, thermal management, and high-voltage distribution strategies. Emphasis is placed on lessons learned during the interdisciplinary collaboration between system-level aircraft modelling and detailed component studies. Special attention is given to the propulsion integration constraints, operational aspects, and the safety and reliability considerations associated with radically different propulsion systems. The retrospective analysis of the collaborative aircraft modelling process in IMOTHEP highlights key takeaways for future hybrid-electric aircraft design efforts.
Dr Graham Bruce is a Senior Specialist Engineer at Rolls-Royce. Graham has an Meng in Electronic Engineering from the University of Manchester, and PhD in Insulation Systems for HVDC Systems. Graham has over 20 years’ industrial experience and has spent much of this time working on electrical technology and high integrity electronic products for Aerospace. His specialist experience includes power electronics, electrical hardware, and insulation coordination. Graham’s main focus is further developing the Power Electronics Product Family for Rolls-Royce’s future gas turbine product portfolio; a capability that supports more efficient power and propulsion systems for Aerospace, and the delivery of products that allow Rolls-Royce’s customers to get to net zero.
Power Electronics for an Aerospace Gas Turbine
Electrification is a key thread across the Rolls-Royce product portfolio. In Aerospace, our Engine Electronic Control Systems already provide high-integrity safety critical control and monitoring. However, we are now assessing airframer future requirements and potential product applicability for our engines in the future. One option is a "More Electric" engine where we increase the level of electrical technology content, for example extracting power directly or electrifying the oil and fuel systems. Alternatively, micro-hybridisation would enable us to optimise engine performance throughout the flight cycle to further reduce fuel consumption. Power Electronics, the ‘Solid-State Gearbox’ is at the heart of this innovation. But what does it take to deploy a Power Electronics Product Family for an Aerospace Gas Turbine.
Prof. Fei Gao serves as the Executive Director of Research, Doctoral Studies, and Innovation at the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard (UTBM) and is also a Full Professor at the School of Energy and Computer Science at UTBM, France. He earned his PhD in Renewable Energy from UTBM in 2010, receiving the Distinguished Youth Doctor Award. Prof. Gao specializes in hydrogen fuel cells for transportation and digital twin technology in modern power electronics and energy systems. He is a Fellow of both IEEE and IET. His academic contributions include authoring or co-authoring 3 books, 4 book chapters, and over 200 technical publications, with over 130 published in international journals. He received the 2020 IEEE J. David Irwin Early Career Award from the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, the 2022 Leon-Nicolas Brillouin Award from SEE France, and the 2022 Sustainable Future Visionary Award from Typhoon HIL company. In 2021, Prof. Gao was appointed a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Industry Applications Society. He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Industrial Electronics Technology News, the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification, and holds leadership roles in various IEEE societies, including Chair of the Award Committee and of the Constitution & Bylaws Committee of the IEEE Transportation Electrification Council, Vice-Chair of the Technical Committee on Electrified Transportation Systems of the IEEE Power Electronics Society, and Vice-Chair of the Industrial Automation and Control Committee of the IEEE Industry Applications Society.
Digital Twins for Modern Power Electronics
Digital twin technology has become increasingly popular in recent years as a powerful tool for enhancing the design, performance, and maintenance of power electronic systems. In this speech, we aim to provide a comprehensive overview of digital twin technology, including its key enabling techniques and their application in power electronics. Our focus will be on high-fidelity real-time simulation methods that enable the creation of virtual models of power electronics systems and the ability to simulate them in real-time. We will discuss the benefits and limitations of different real-time modeling approaches and the challenges associated with combining power electronic real-time models and renewable energy real-time models to create power system digital twins. Furthermore, we will present several case studies that demonstrate the implementation of digital twins in power electronics. Finally, we will conclude by highlighting the future directions, challenges, and opportunities of power electronics digital twin technology. This speech aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of digital twin technology applied to the power electronics field and its potential to shape the future of power systems.
Dave is a Chief Engineer and Raytheon Technical Fellow, respected for his 35 year knowledge of the Power Domain. Dave joined Raytheon in 2001 having started his career in power supply design for military navigation systems. Subsequent employments followed in in the telecoms sector designing ACDC and DCDC multiple output convertors. Since joining Raytheon in 2001 he has been involved in every aspect of Power Electronic Design for a wide variety of military systems ranging from a few Watts to 50kW. The design of those converters for manufacturability has been a thread running throughout this time.
Putting it all together – The Importance of Collaboration in Power Electronic Design.
Power Electronics Product Design brings together a wide variety of competing design criteria: electrical function (Amps and Volts), electrical safety, EMI compliance, device temperature management, environmental testing (Shock, vibration, temperature etc), Reliability and Design for Manufacture. The trade between these criteria determines the success of the design, in both exceeding the customer expectations, and in containing the cost of development. In this session we will explore some examples of product design challenges which required collaboration between experts to achieve the end goal, and we will look at the partnerships involved and the behaviours which drive success.
Mark has a B.Eng(Hons) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and a MSc in Electro-Magnetic Compatibility. He has worked in electrical systems for over 30 years including a number of ground breaking projects such as multi-axis automated welding systems, submarine electrical projects, type 45 electrical architecture and More-Electric & Hybrid-electric aircraft projects. In 2021 he moved from Rolls-Royce Electrical to GKN aerospace to head up the electrical network team on an ATI funded sustainable fuel cell aircraft project called H2Gear. This project is seeking to deliver the world's first large passenger full-electric aircraft. As a GKN technical associate he is responsible for ensuring the aircraft's electrical system design delivers a practical certifiable solution.
Delivering an Electrical System for Liquid Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Aircraft
GKN through the support of ATI funding are seeking to develop power and propulsion equipment to support the World’s first full-electric large passenger aircraft powered by liquid hydrogen fuelled fuel cells. The GKN design involves leading technology on utilising a cryogenically cooled electrical power plant. The GKN notional sustainable aircraft designs demonstrate the need for a highly integrated electrical network design to ensure all critical aircraft electrical powered loads can be supplied safely, reliably and stably across multiple flight phases. This highly integrated electrical network relies significantly on the co-ordinated operation of power electronic controlled power sources and aircraft loads to ensure optimum use of all available systems. For safety critical systems it is necessary to consider resilience against a number of potential failure events with the necessary fault detection, fault isolation and fault reaction to ensure continuous safe flight and landing (CSFL). This key note presents the holistic approach GKN have taken to deliver a safe and reliable electrical system design with a high penetration of power electronic converters.
Dr. Thomas Jahns received his PhD in electrical engineering from MIT (USA) in 1978.
In 1998, Dr. Jahns joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a Grainger Professor of Power Electronics and Electric Machines, where he served as a Director/Co-Director of the Wisconsin Electric Machines and Power Electronics Consortium (WEMPEC) from 2007 to 2021. Prior to joining UW, he worked at GE Corporate R&D in Niskayuna, NY (USA), for 15 years. Dr. Jahns retired from the active faculty in 2021 and is now a Grainger Emeritus Professor.
Dr. Jahns received the 2005 IEEE Nikola Tesla Technical Field Award and the William Newell Award from the IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS) in 1999. He is a PELS Past President and served on the IEEE Board of Directors (2001-2002). Dr. Jahns was elected as a member of the US National Academy of Engineering in 2015 and received the IEEE Medal in Power Engineering in 2022.
Fault Tolerant Modular Motor Drives
Impressive progress is being reported around the world on achieving major increases in the power density of electrified aircraft propulsion drive systems. However, the reliability of today’s electric machine drives falls orders of magnitude short of the daunting reliability requirements of propulsion systems in today’s commercial wide-body aircraft. While many agree that modularity will play a major role in achieving major drive reliability improvements, modularity is woefully inadequate to do the job alone. The first part of this presentation will be devoted to examining the four key features required in tomorrow’s aerospace electric machine drives to make them even candidates for meeting the highly demanding flight reliability certification requirements associated with future all-electric commercial aircraft. The second half of the presentation will address the concept of fault-tolerant modular machine drives (FT-MMDs) that is being pursued as a promising approach for achieving major improvements in the machine drive’s mean-time-to-failure (MTTF) ratings while simultaneously delivering world-class power density values. A combination of analysis and experimental results for a FT-MMD demonstrator unit now under development will be presented to illuminate both the encouraging progress being made to achieve major reliability improvements as well as the serious remaining challenges.
Rafael Peña Alzola earned his combined Licentiate/MSc degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain, followed by his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the National Open University (UNED) in Madrid, Spain.
He was a Guest Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Energy Technology at Aalborg University, Denmark, from September 2012 to July 2013. Between August 2014 and December 2016, he held a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. From January to May 2017, he undertook a short-term industrial collaboration at the University of Alcalá in Madrid, Spain.
Since June 2017, he has been a Research Fellow at the Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK. He has collaborated with several aerospace companies including Airbus, Raytheon UK, IHI Corporation and GKN. His research interests include energy storage, LCL filters, solid-state transformers, innovative control techniques, solid-state breakers and power electronics for aircraft applications.
University Perspectives on Power Electronics for Aircraft Applications
University perspectives on aircraft power electronics must address collaboration with industry and the training of future engineers.
Industry-established converters set the benchmark for academic topologies. While inexpensive and reliable silicon devices continue to reduce losses, wide-bandgap semiconductors (GaN, SiC) dominate research due to their weight and efficiency advantages. Wide-bandgap devices introduce PCB-layout complexity and require high-bandwidth sensing.
Universities rely heavily on simulation tools. Spice-based software evaluates switches and gate drivers, with a trend towards virtual prototyping on multi-domain platforms such as Modelica or VHDL-AMS. Magnetic and thermal design can benefit greatly from finite-element analysis, encouraging cross-disciplinary academic research.
Many simulation suites support automatic code generation for microcontrollers, DSPs and FPGAs, increasingly favoured for certification. Rapid controller prototyping uses real inverters or hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) systems for exhaustive testing.
In addition to reducing converter and filter size, aerospace power electronics also demand protection schemes — over-current tolerance, device-level protection and solid-state breakers. Modular, parallel-interleaved converters balance redundancy against weight and cost. Reliability monitoring hinges on online sensing and digital twins. At system level, aircraft electrical networks — where converters are now ubiquitous — must support dynamic reconfiguration under fault conditions.
Finally, teaching power electronics is challenging, given its broad scope. At Strathclyde, lectures are complemented by simulation software, educational videos and project-based learning.