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POETS Research & Development Center (PRDC)

Located in Champaign, IL

Newly-constructed in 2015, the 10,000 sq. ft. POETS Research & Development Center (PRDC) includes bay areas, offices and meeting areas just south of the UIUC campus. This testbed facility will allow for high-power testing of electrical systems such as motors, drives, power electronics, batteries, etc. Additional capability includes advanced thermal management systems and vehicle-level integration. The flexible and modular layout encourages a variety of testing from small prototypes to full scale systems using 100s of kW with a focus on aircraft and off-highway systems. As of 2023, the center has 3 fully-commissioned testbed ( two in PRDC, UIUC, and one in NCREPT, University of Arkansas):

 

Testbed 3, 200 kW Drivetrain Testbed

Capabilities:

  • Up to 300kW, 10,000 RPM
  • Flexible, user created drive profiles
  • Modular hardware and software design
  • Can operate using braking resistor or pump-back from dyno
  • Blast shield for experimental motors
  • Enviromental chamber for reliability studies

Example Projects:

  • 1MW Air Core PMSM High Power Density Motor
  • PMSM Position Estimation using Hall Effect Sensors and Neural Networks
  • Module High Efficiency Power Inverters for Extreme Power Dense Applications

 

Testbed 4, 10 kW Modular Experimental Platform for Hybrid Systems

Capabilities:

  • Electrical/Mechanical subsystems
    • Hybrid electrical drivetrain
    • Interfaces with any electrical load
  • Thermal Subsystem
    • Thermal "breadboard" for easy reconfiguration
  • HIL subsystem interface

Example Projects:

  • Hierarchical Predictive Control
  • Hierarchical Estimation and Fault Diagnosis

 

Testbed 5, 250 kW Drivetrain Testbed

Capabilities:

  • Up to 300kW
  • Flexible, user created drive profiles
  • Modular hardware and software design
  • Blast shield for experimental motors
  • HIL capabilities
  • Regenerative 250kW, 815 VDC battery simulator

Example Projects:

  • Brunswick integrated electric drive design, test, and validation with simulation and virtual models.

 

 

1 MW Drivetrain Testbed

Capabilities:

  • Up to 1000 kW
  • Variable DC bus voltage 700-1150 V
  • High-speed DAQ
  • Flexible, user created drive profiles
  • Modular hardware and software design
  • Blast shield for experimental motors
  • Portable cooling capabilities
  • HIL capabilities

Commission by 2026

 

 

EMI/EMC Test System

Capabilities:

  • DO-160G Section 20 conducted susceptibility portion
  • DO-160G Section 21 conducted and radiated emission
  • MIL-STD 461G CE102 conducted emission
  • MIL-STD-461G RE 102 radiated emission partial frequency range coverage
  • MIL-STD-461G CS 114 conducted susceptibility

Commission by 2026

Gaseous Helium (GHe) System for Cryogenic Research

More details coming soon.

Commission by 2026

For more information, go to Page Testbed Information.