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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - TRADE (Turbo electRic Aircraft Design Environment (TRADE))

Teaser

The air traffic keeps increasing and predictions estimate that it will double by 2050. Nevertheless, today aircraft fuel consumption is not neglectable and should be reduced in order to limit the associated environmental impact. Therefore, long term roadmaps such as the ACARE...

Summary

The air traffic keeps increasing and predictions estimate that it will double by 2050. Nevertheless, today aircraft fuel consumption is not neglectable and should be reduced in order to limit the associated environmental impact. Therefore, long term roadmaps such as the ACARE 2020 Goals or the Flightpath 2050 call out specific goals in this direction (75% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions per passenger kilometre and a 90% reduction in nitrogen oxides).
While, on the last decades, manufacturers focused mostly toward technology improvements – typically by improving the components design – a new dynamic appears in the last years, which would be a technology breakthrough in aerospace. Partially (hybrid) or fully electric aircraft is seen as a rupture technology to reach emission reduction goals.
In a complex system such as airplanes, the optimum design is usually not the sum of optimized subsystems but requires the optimization of the entire system at once.

Work performed

TRADE (Turbo electRic Aircraft Design Environment) proposes the integration of three new aspects into aircraft/engine conceptual design. First, an advanced structural model quantifies the impact of the installation of heavy equipment on the sizing of the aircraft structure. Second, refined onboard system models capture design and performance trades in electric power systems, gas turbines, and thermal management. Finally, an operational and mission model enables flight dynamic analyses and an assessment of handling qualities of diverging aircraft configurations. All improvements build on extensive model assets of the consortium members.
TRADE also delivers the integration of these new aspects into a conceptual design environment. The environment is suitable for the design of hybrid electric aircraft, and the consortium has applied it primarily for the configuration assessment of a boosted turbofan at subsystem as well as whole-aircraft level.

Final results

State of the art: Advanced modelling is currently available for conventional high bypass ratio engines, electrical power systems, and thermal management systems in isolation.
Identified gaps: When the current state of the art modelling of hybrid propulsion systems is considered, limitations exist in the development and adaptation of models dedicated to specific components for such advanced future engine architectures. Hence the multi-disciplinary effects of a combination of radical components (electrical motors, converters/transformers, cables, energy storage, electrical fans, super-conductivity, cryo-coolers etc.) on integrated solutions have not been considered.
Progress beyond the state of the art: In order to progress from existing modelling capability and to adequately assess performance (in terms of thrust capabilities and block fuel consumption) at a preliminary design stage, reliable and robust models will be developed. These models will be capable of establishing the design impact of the novel components on the aircraft and propulsion system weight, life, overall mission fuel burn and environmental emissions (CO2) and direct operating costs for the aircraft.
A customised multi-disciplinary design framework with the integrated models will be used to create design space maps. It will be used to optimise the hybrid propulsion system, establishing the link between the thermal power part and the electrical power part, while assessing the effect of component losses and their dependencies to key design parameters. The framework will then be used to undertake mission level performance optimisation of individual components and the integrated system while considering dimensions, weight, drag and engine uninstalled/installed performance.
The progress will be ascertained through positioning of the optimum engine/aircraft designs on the created design space maps, in order to demonstrate whether hybrid propulsion systems and their enabling technologies are feasible.
The integration of model assets like Modelica libraries on gas turbines, electrical power systems, and thermal management including cooling, and EVA aim to provide significant progress beyond state-of-the art with respect to the modelling of new enabling technologies, more robust models and a more robust integration framework and a broader range of design space exploration and multi-disciplinary optimisation studies.
With the model-based design platform suggested by TRADE, the aircraft sub-system models will be interfaced for the first time from their “native modelling language” with full expressivity required to cover this wide domain to a native aircraft conceptual design environment enabling full system level MDO.
Equally important to the development of new or extended component models, the unconventional system analyses within TRADE will provide additional cases, on which the current object-oriented library structures can be evaluated, and which possibly will allow improving the structure further making the libraries even more flexible and adaptive.

Website & more info

More info: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/aerospace/projects/cleansky/trade-project.aspx.