Thermal management system design for a series hybrid-electric propulsion architecture

Abstract

The current paper is focused on the conceptual design of a thermal management system with a liquid working medium for a commuter hybrid-electric aircraft, featuring a series propulsion configuration. Regarding the system’s architecture, parametric analyses are conducted, by altering the number of heat exchangers. To clarify, a centralised and a decentralised thermal management system architecture are examined. Furthermore, a computational model calculates the temperatures during the system’s operation and the required coolant mass flows to sufficiently cool all the compartments. Subsequently, the required heat exchanger surface is determined and the weight of each compartment that comprises the thermal management system can be calculated. It is worth noting, that the compartments’ cold plate weight is integrated. The results indicate that the decentralised configuration results in lower temperature fields for all components compared to the centralised configuration. However, the latter weighs 32.2% lower at 158.22kg while the decentralised configuration weighs 233.48kg.