Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2019
25th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
Assessment of Electrification on Conceptual Design of Thin Haul Aircraft
Submission Author:
Higor Luis Silva , MG , Brazil
Co-Authors:
Higor Luis Silva, Thiago Guimaraes
Presenter: Higor Luis Silva
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2019.COB2019-1130
Abstract
In recent years, the scientific community and several governmental organizations around the world have been discussing ways to reduce pollutant emissions and other environmental issues. Moreover, the means of transport are included in these debates, making the aerospace industry to develop new technologies and aircraft more efficient and "green". Thus, electric and hybrid-electric propulsion systems are designed in aviation to contribute to the reduction of pollutant emissions, but, as a consequence, they bring new design concepts and performance gains, such as reduction of fuel consumption. In this context, this paper presents the effects that powertrain with distributed propulsion produces on the conceptual design of an aircraft, i.e., what are the improvements brought by such a system. By means of parametric analyses, the influences of some fundamental parameters, such as number of engines and fraction of wingspan occupied by the DP array, are shown. The results showed that electrification brings great benefits in conceptual design, increasing the feasible design space, which allows smaller wings and smaller powertrains. In addition, there is an improvement in performance, enabling applications in flight operations such as thin haul aircraft, which are used as an example of application.
Keywords
aircraft design, hybrid-electric aircraft, thin haul aircraft, distributed propulsion
