Performance analysis of an electrically assisted propulsion system for a short-range civil aircraft

Abstract

With civil aviation growing at around 4.7% per annum, the environmental footprint of aviation is increasing. Moreover, the use of kerosene as a fuel accelerates the depletion of non-renewable fossil fuels and increases global warming. Hence, the aviation industry has to come up with new technologies to reduce its environmental impact and make aviation more sustainable. An electrically assisted propulsion system can combine the benefits of an electrical power source with a conventional turbofan engine. However, the additional electrical system increases the weight of the aircraft and complexity of the power management system. The objective of this research is to analyze the effect of an assistive electrical system on the performance of a turbofan engine for an A320 class aircraft on a short-range mission. The developed simulation model consists of an aircraft performance model combined with a propulsion model. The power management strategy is integrated within the simulation model. With the proposed propulsion system and power management strategy, the electrically assisted propulsion system would be able to reduce fuel burn, total energy consumption, and emissions for short-range missions of around 1000 km.

Analysis and design of hybrid electric regional turboprop aircraft

“…It was demonstrated by Perullo and Mavris [13] that it is important to combine the mission optimization, aimed at finding the optimum transient power split, with the aircraft design optimization. Ang et al [14] investigated the benefits of this approach for a hybrid electric version of an Airbus A320. It is demonstrated that for short-range missions of 1000 km a fuel burn saving of 7.5% can be achieved when the engine is scaled to 90% and electric power is used to assist the take-off and climb phases (with 25 and 14% electric power, respectively).…”

A Review of Concepts, Benefits, and Challenges for Future Electrical Propulsion-Based Aircraft

“…With a core size optimized for the cruise operating condition, the concept provides potential for a 6% fuel burn reduction and 2.5% energy saving y for a 900 nm mission range [31]. A conceptual design from TU Delft, on A320 type aircraft, with a core resized to 90% of the original size and provisioning for 25% take-off hybridization and 14% climb hybridization, showed opportunity for 7.5% fuel burn reduction, when assessed over 1000 km mission range [87]. This energy boost operation also showed 3.7% NOx emission reduction opportunity in the engine.…”

“…The studies showed that both high SP ED and high efficiency in η ED are paramount, for a high level of power integration in a larger aircraft. Saving weight in the drive system has a positive snowball impact whereas any improvement in the efficiency of the system would lead to the direct saving in fuel consumption or battery energy consumption [11,87]. Each % efficiency improvement for the downstream components in the power drivetrain reduces the battery size and also merits reduction in amount of waste heat and weight related to thermal management system components [105].…”

Parallel hybrid electric propulsion architecture for single aisle aircraft - powertrain investigation

“…Also these effects can be simulated with the GSP model. The use of such a GSP engine model in HEP studies is described in detail in [8].…”