A Review of Integrated Motor Drive and Wide-Bandgap Power Electronics for High-Performance Electro-Hydrostatic Actuators

An integration of an electric motor and a drive with wide-bandgap (WBG) devices possesses numerous attractive features for electrified and decentralized actuation systems. The WBG devices can operate at a high-junction temperature (> 170 degrees C) with improved efficiency due to fast switching speed and low on-state resistance. It also leads to better performance and higher power density electro-hydrostatic actuators (EHAs) than the traditional solutions, which are being widely adopted in industrial applications such as aerospace, robotics, automobiles, manufacturing, wind turbine, and off-road vehicles. This paper introduces and investigates the benefits of the integrated motor drive with the WBG-based power electronics for the EHA systems.