EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training for Sustainable Electric Propulsion (CDT SEP)

在接下来的20年里，汽车和航空航天领域将经历一场推进技术的根本性革命。汽车行业将迅速从汽油和柴油发动机驱动的汽车转向全电动汽车，而飞机将从纯煤油动力的喷气发动机转向混合动力推进。汽车和航空航天行业在过去20年里一直致力于发展电力推进研究，但直到最近，由于大幅减少温室气体排放的立法滞后，来自行业和政府的开发投资一直很低。2016年的《巴黎协定》旨在将本世纪全球气温升幅控制在2摄氏度以下。自该协定获得批准以来，工业发达国家的政府现已立法禁止新的内燃机驱动汽车(英国和法国到2040年，德国到2030年，中国预计很快就会有类似的立法)。这一禁令的实施将使全球电动汽车市场在2020年大幅增长至750万辆，并呈指数级增长。在航空航天领域，空中客车(Airbus)、西门子(Siemens)和劳斯莱斯(Rolls-Royce)宣布，在成功测试2座电动飞机后，将于2030年推出一款100座的混合动力飞机。其他美国和欧洲的航空工业，如波音和通用电气，也必须为推进技术的这一根本性转变做好准备。每一辆电动汽车和每一架混合动力飞机都需要一个电力驱动(推进)系统，该系统通常包括一个马达和控制能量流向马达的电子设备。为了使这成为具有成本效益的现实，电动驱动的成本必须减半，其尺寸和重量必须比今天的驱动系统减少高达500%。这些目标只能通过电动马达和电力电子(电容器、电感和半导体开关)这两个子系统的根本集成来实现。目前，这两个系统是作为两个独立的系统构建的，两者的融合在电力电子元件和电机之间产生了新的相互作用和物理现象。例如，所有电力电子元件都会经历大量的机械振动和电机产生的热量。其他挑战是将毫米薄的电力电子半导体连接到一个大几百倍的铝块上，该铝块容纳了电机，以提高机械强度。为了实现这种类型的整合，行业认识到，未来的专业工程师需要的技能超出了传统的多学科方法，即单个专家在一个团队中共同工作。未来的推进工程师必须采用跨学科和创造性的思维，才能理解其他学科的要求。此外，他们还需要了解非传统工程学科，如商业思维、大数据的使用、环境问题和伦理影响。未来的推进工程师将需要体验一种既强调深厚的学科知识又强调跨学科思维的培训环境。可持续电力推进电力电子领域的EPSRC CDT由英国该领域最大和最具前瞻性的两个研究小组(分别位于纽卡斯尔大学和诺丁汉大学)组成，其中包括16个领先的工业合作伙伴(康明斯、戴森、中国中车、Protean等)。他们都有一个共同的愿景：培养新一代英国电力电子专家，以满足社会和工业对未来汽车和航空航天运输基础设施对清洁电力推进系统的需求。

Over the next twenty years, the automotive and aerospace sector will undergo a fundamental revolution in propulsion technology. The automotive sector will rapidly move away from petrol and diesel engine powered cars towards fully electric propelled vehicles whilst planes will move away from pure kerosene powered jet engines to hybrid-electric propulsion. The automotive and aerospace industry has worked for the last two decades on developing electric propulsion research but development investment from industry and governments was low until recently, due to lag of legislation to significantly reduce greenhouse gases. Since the ratification of the 2016 Paris Agreement, which aims to keep global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius, governments of industrial developed nations have now legislated to ban new combustion powered vehicles (by 2040 in the UK and France, by 2030 in Germany and similar legislation is expected soon in China). The implementation of this ban will see a sharp rise of the global electric vehicle market to 7.5 million by 2020 with exponential growth. In the aerospace sector, Airbus, Siemens and Rolls-Royce have announced a 100-seater hybrid-electric aircraft to be launched by 2030 following successful tests of 2 seater electric powered planes. Other American and European aerospace industries such as Boeing and General Electric must also prepare for this fundamental shift in propulsion technology. Every electric car and every hybrid-electric plane needs an electric drive (propulsion) system, which typically comprises a motor and the electronics that controls the flow of energy to the motor. In order to make this a cost-effective reality, the cost of electric drives must be halved and their size and weight must be reduced by up to 500% compared to today's drive systems. These targets can only be achieved by radical integration of these two sub-systems that form an electric drive: the electric motor and the power electronics (capacitors, inductors and semiconductor switches). These are currently built as two independent systems and the fusion of both creates new interactions and physical phenomena between power electronics components and the electric motor. For example, all power electronics components would experience lots of mechanical vibrations and heat from the electric motor. Other challenges are in the assembly of connecting millimetre thin power electronics semiconductors onto a large hundred times bigger aluminium block that houses the electric motor for mechanical strength. To achieve this type of integration, industry recognises that future professional engineers need skills beyond the classical multi-disciplinary approach where individual experts work together in a team. Future propulsion engineers must adopt cross-disciplinary and creative thinking in order to understand the requirements of other disciplines. In addition, they will need an understanding of non-traditional engineering subjects such as business thinking, use of big data, environmental issues and ethical impact. Future propulsion engineers will need to experience a training environment that emphasises both deep subject knowledge and cross-disciplinary thinking. This EPSRC CDT in Power Electronics for Sustainable Electric Propulsion is formed by two of UK's largest and most forward thinking research groups in this field (at Newcastle and Nottingham Universities) and includes 16 leading industrial partners (Cummins, Dyson, CRRC, Protean, to name a few). All of them sharing one vision: To create a new generation of UK power electronics specialists, needed to meet the societal and industrial demand for clean, electric propulsion systems in future automotive and aerospace transport infrastructures.