*********************************
There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
*********************************
Title: Control Strategies for Piezoelectrically Actuated Fast Mechanical Disconnect Switches for Hybrid Circuit Breakers
Committee:
Dr. Lukas Graber, ECE, Chair , Advisor
Dr. Maryam Saeedifard, ECE
Dr. Santiago Grijalva, ECE
Dr. Deepakraj Divan, ECE
Dr. Michael Steurer, Florida State
Abstract: The objective of the proposed research is to develop the switching motion control strategies for piezoelectrically-actuated fast mechanical switches to generate fast and steady contact movements to satisfy the requirements of hybrid circuit breakers. The proposed switching motion controllers are expected to balance the requirements for a heavy mechanical payload, a fast switching response, and a large displacement range meanwhile tackling the challenge of excessive vibration in travel curves. Broad selections of active damping filters with their systematic tuning principles are established in this research. Comprehensive evaluations are performed through controller-in-the-loop simulations and hardware implementation tests to demonstrate the vibration attenuation performance of proposed switching motion controllers. With more linear and vibration-damped travel curves, the overall piezoelectrically-actuated fast mechanical switch can achieve the faster switching speed and accommodate more complicated circuit interruption operations to better protect the medium-voltage direct-current power systems.
