Safety considerations and time constant determined extended operations for fuel cell-powered aircrafts

Abstract

AbstractProton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) are seen to be promising for achieving the transformation from traditional aircrafts to All Electric aircrafts (AEA). While several field studies already proved the feasibility of a fuel cell-powered aircraft, the limiting factor for the implementation in the civilian aircraft sector is widely thought to be the specific power of the fuel cell system. Moreover, potentially, this specific power is notably affected by the aviation safety code. This study aims to quantify and relieve this effect by introducing a novel extended operation strategy. This strategy takes advantage of the degradation time constants of the fuel cell system in case of sub-system failure. The results show the great influence of the aviation certification code on system specific power. The extended operation strategy seems working notably. However, for practical implementation, individual failure probabilities on a component level need to be studied more extensively.