Effective Pathway to High-Performance More-Electric Aircraft

Abstract

The current battery and power system technologies are adequate for electric cars but still not mature enough to be implemented in commercial electric aircraft. This research aims to provide an overview of potential solutions for the electrification of the major systems of conventional aircraft, which includes advancements in the efficiency of the energy systems and reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The background of the evolution of electric aircraft is given in the beginning. The challenges faced by engineers in electrifying the current commercial airliners are introduced and analyzed. Efforts are given to provide an outlook of the current progress of development of this field along with the key technologies applied by current more-electric aircraft (MEA). Finally, several promising future trends in the development of MEA are discussed.