The aerospace industry is steadily transitioning toward More Electric Aircraft (MEA) and eVTOL architectures to improve fuel efficiency, reduce emissions, simplify maintenance, and enable next-generation mobility solutions. This shift replaces traditional hydraulic and pneumatic systems with electrically driven subsystems, introducing new requirements in power electronics, motor control, software certification, and overall system integration.

As electrification advances, aircraft architectures are evolving toward electrically controlled actuation, distributed power electronics, and increasingly software-defined control systems. Current and emerging programs indicate operating requirements spanning 270 VDC to 950 VDC, power levels from a few hundred watts up to approximately 150 kW and switching frequencies approaching 100 kHz. In this context, a reusable Field Control Unit (FCU) platform becomes highly valuable, providing a common foundation for motor control, DC load management, diagnostics, communication interfaces, and certification-focused development.

This white paper examines how reusable FCU platforms, combined with model-based development and scalable hardware–software architectures, can accelerate development timelines, improve certification readiness, and reduce engineering risk in electrified aerospace systems. It reviews key drivers of aircraft electrification, highlights representative use cases, explains the need for a scalable FCU reference platform, outlines model-based development and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) validation approaches, and presents a structured roadmap for implementation.