Design and Development of Hybrid-Electric Propulsion Model for Aeronautics

Abstract

Nowadays, worldwide environmental issue, associated to reduction of pollutant and greenhouse emissions are gaining considerable attention. Aviation sector contribution to the whole CO2 released accounts to around 2%, but it is expected to grow in the next future due to increase of demand. Probably, combustion engine design and fuel efficiency have already reached their optimum technology level and only a breakthrough as hybrid-electric propulsion could be able to satisfy the new international more demanding requirements. However, an improvement of the technology readiness level of hybrid-electric propulsion is strongly necessary and many operational and safety challenges should be addressed. In the work here reported, a hybrid-electric model was designed and developed for general aviation aircrafts, by means of the Mathworks® Matlab – Simulink 1D/0D simulation environment. Both thermal and electric energy storage units, transmission systems and power management devices were considered and the overall performances were evaluated during cruise phase and a conventional training mission, characterized by several run(lap) “touch-and-go”. Furthermore, an innovative mathematical methodology was implemented for battery pack discharge profile interpolation. Finally, reliability and accuracy of the new proposed model were evaluated through comparison with the commercial code Simcenter AMESim® software and an average bias only equal to 5% was achieved.