Development of DC–DC Converters for Fuel-Cell Hybrid Power Systems in a Lift–Cruise Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Lift–cruise-type unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) powered by hydrogen fuel cells often integrate secondary energy storage devices to improve responsiveness to load fluctuations during different flight phases, which necessitates an efficient energy management strategy that optimizes power allocation among multiple power sources. This paper presents an innovative fuel cell DC–DC converter (FDC) design for the hybrid power system of a lift–cruise-type UAV comprising a multi-stack fuel cell system and a battery. The novelty of this work lies in the development of an FDC suitable for a multi-stack fuel cell system through a dual-input single-output converter structure and a control algorithm. To integrate inputs supplied from two hydrogen fuel cell stacks into a single output, a controller with a single voltage controller–dual current controller structure was applied, and its performance was verified through simulations and experiments. Load balancing was maintained even under input asymmetry, and fault-tolerant performance was evaluated by analyzing the FDC output waveform under a simulated single-stack input failure. Furthermore, under the assumed flight scenarios, the results demonstrate that stable and efficient power supply is achieved through power-supply mode switching and application of a power distribution algorithm.