In recent years, increased awareness on global warming effects led to a renewed interest in all kinds of green technologies. Among them, some attention has been devoted to hybrid-electric aircraft – aircraft where the propulsion system contains power systems driven by electricity and power systems driven by hydrocarbon-based fuel. Examples of these systems include electric motors and gas turbines, respectively. Despite the fact that several research groups have tried to design such aircraft, in a way, it can actually save fuel with respect to conventional designs, the results hardly approach the required fuel savings to justify a new design. One possible path to improve these designs is to optimize the onboard energy management, in other words, when to use fuel and when to use stored electricity during a mission. The purpose of this paper is to address the topic of energy management applied to hybrid-electric aircraft, including its relevance for the conceptual design of aircraft and present a practical example of optimal energy management.

    Design/methodology/approach

    To address this problem the dynamic programming (DP) method for optimal control problems was used and, together with an aircraft performance model, an optimal energy management was obtained for a given aircraft flying a given trajectory.

    Findings

    The results show how the energy onboard a hybrid fuel-battery aircraft can be optimally managed during the mission. The optimal results were compared with non-optimal result, and small differences were found. A large sensitivity of the results to the battery charging efficiency was also found.

    Originality/value

    The novelty of this work comes from the application of DP for energy management to a variable weight system which includes energy recovery via a propeller.


    Access

    Download


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Optimal energy management for hybrid-electric aircraft


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2020-05-04


    Size :

    11 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




    Hybrid Electric Aircraft Switched Model Optimal Control

    Wall, Tyler J. / Meyer, Richard T. | AIAA | 2020


    Energy Management for Fuel Cell Powered Hybrid-Electric Aircraft

    Bradley, Thomas / Moffitt, Blake / Parekh, David et al. | AIAA | 2009


    HYBRID ELECTRIC AIRCRAFT ENERGY REGENERATION

    SPIERLING TODD A / IVES KYLE STEPHEN | European Patent Office | 2021

    Free access

    Energy Management for an All-Electric Aircraft via Optimal Control

    Wang, Mengyuan / Kolluri, Suryanarayana / Shah, Krishna et al. | IEEE | 2023