Space
With our experience in power electronics for constrained environments, our mission at Watt & Well is to apply our expertise to projects that go beyond our planetary frontiers into Space. Our engineered products are used for motor controllers, power supplies, and fail-operational systems, in the most challenging Space environments.
Expertise.
Our mission at Watt & Well is to bring about a step-change in the Space market with low recurring costs for motor controllers, power supplies, and fail-operational products. Our product architecture, which is based on automotive components, incurs lower costs whilst ensuring the environmental resistance and reliability essential for the constrained environment of Space. Our research and development facilities in Massy (91), France, are fully compliant with the EN 9100 quality management standards for the aerospace industry.
Aerospace motor control is a key expertise of Watt & Well. Our engineers have worked on high-end motor control for more than 10 years.
Fail-operational and fault-tolerant systems, which allow redundancy directly inside equipment, is another key area of expertise at Watt & Well.
We have the building blocks and expertise to design any aerospace required power supply.
Services.
Design—Hardware, FPGA, Software
Our engineering team can develop the required hardware, software or FPGA (field-programmable gate array) functions tailored to specific requirements. These can be customized from existing building blocks or designed from scratch. Hardware functions can include local power supplies, latching current limiters, digital controllers, sensors, analog front ends, power stages (including magnetics), and EMI filters. Software and FPGA functions include data acquisition, communication protocols (Serial, CAN, Ethernet), control loops, FDIR (fault detection, isolation and recovery), and modulation for power switches.
Prototyping
Prototyping allows fast, iterative work on innovative products to identify and debug issues and improve performance.
Our capabilities include a network of agile and qualified partners, together with our in-house workshop for board modification, repair, and software prototyping that uses code generation. Produced proofs of concept are useful for early concept validation and system requirement maturation.
Simulation
Using Simulink, our control engineers can model electrical architecture or a part of it. They can simulate mission scenarios and verify that the proposed architecture and equipment meet the requirements.
Our simulations include stability studies, motor drive performance analysis, power consumption evaluation, or any other critical characteristics of the specific system.
Qualification
Our in-house instruments allow us to run the following tests and pre-qualifications: functional, thermal, humidity, conducted, and near field EMC (electromagnetic compatibility). Other qualification tests can be organized upon request.
Quality management.
In our commitment to space exploration, at Watt & Well we place quality at the core of each Space mission. The demanding nature of the aerospace environment necessitates rigorous quality management to ensure the reliability of electronic components and power systems to be deployed.
Watt & Well is certified EN 9100:2017 for aerospace development, and our engineering team is dedicated to delivering the right level of quality in order to meet each client’s needs.
Case studies.
Ariane 6 – Motor Pumps Controller (CMTP)
Watt & Well is part of the Ariane 6 development program that aims at providing Europe with a new launch vehicle best adapted to customers’ evolving needs.
As a direct subcontractor of ArianeGroup, Watt & Well has designed a fault tolerant motor controller for the 2nd stage of a new heavy launcher. Our product has been developed in compliance with space level quality management standards.
Ruggedness of the CMTP design had been demonstrated by exhaustive environmental testing, including thermal vacuum and pyro shock testing. The first flight equipment has been delivered. Equipment production is now ongoing with our space supply chain.
LILAC Project
Watt & Well has received funding from the France Relance 2030 Investment Plan to support its LILAC space project. The scope of the project is to develop Electric Launcher Actuator Controls for micro launchers. The ambition is to electrify the separate stages of these micro launchers, to control the thrust vector for space engines by addressing the simultaneous challenges of high-power density, miniaturization, reliability, and tolerance within the technical constraints of the aerospace environment. The approach is to create a standardized design for a product family of high-power motor controllers for actuators and motopumps that are competitive with low recurring costs.
100% made in France, the funding will support the research and industrialization of the actuator controls over a timeframe of 36 months to meet the 2025 calendar for micro launchers.
HALFOM Project
Watt & Well has successfully completed its research and development work for the HALFOM project with delivery of two demonstrators, one for aerospace applications, the other for electronic vertical landing and take-off (e-VTOL) applications.
The HALFOM project was launched in 2020 with the dual innovation support scheme of the French Defense Innovation Agency, in partnership with ArianeGroup and Airbus Helicopters. The demonstrators were co-developed, with power electronics designed by Watt & Well and the motor designed by Laboratoire GREEN (Group de Recherche en Energy Electrique de Nancy), to the specifications provided by ArianeGroup and Airbus Helicopters.
This project was the opportunity for us to expand our knowledge and competencies for high-power electronics applications, up to 100kW, and to extend our range of high reliability motor controllers, capable of sub-millisecond autonomous reconfiguration for fault-tolerant power topologies. The know-how gained through this R&D project place Watt & Well at the cutting edge of innovation for electronic propulsion, a field of rapid and constant development.
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