Emissionless Aircraft- Requirements and Challenges

Wickenheiser, Timothy J.; Sehra, Arun K.; Seng, Gary T.; Freeh, Joshua E.; Berton, Jeffery J.

doi:10.2514/6.2003-2810

Cited by 16 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Of particular interest here is the expected 50% reduction of CO 2 by year 2022 [9]. It was simply taken that to satisfy the 50% reduction of CO 2 , the amount of fuel burned also has to be reduced by 50%.…”

Section: Aircraft Fuel Efficiencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Preliminary Study of Emissions Regulation Effects on Future Commercial Aircraft Designs

Romli¹,

Kamaruddin²

2013

IJESD

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract-Conventional aircraft designs have long been highly successful for commercial passengers transport markets. In recent years, there are researches carried out to explore a few revolutionary concepts such as the blended wing body. With expected stricter environmental regulations to be imposed by the aviation regulatory bodies for future flight operations, questions arise on the relevancy of conventional aircraft designs to remain competitive in years to come and on whether the search for new revolutionary aircraft designs has become necessary. This study aims to assess the situation by analyzing the projected emission performance of conventional aircraft designs through changes of their parameters. Overall, the results indicate that conventional aircraft designs face a tough chance to remain competitive when the proposed regulation takes place and a more aerodynamically efficient design is necessary.

show abstract

Section: Aircraft Fuel Efficiencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Preliminary Study of Emissions Regulation Effects on Future Commercial Aircraft Designs

Romli¹,

Kamaruddin²

2013

IJESD

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Energy density is measured as the electrical output power of the powerplant at cruise divided by the sum of the weights of the powerplant, balance of plant, hydrogen storage and hydrogen. Many researchers have proposed that the design of long-endurance fuel cell aircraft may be simplified by designing the fuel cell system so as to maximize energy density without consideration of the aircraft propulsion sub-system performance or aircraft geometry 2,9,27 . Other studies using fuel cell propulsion system models integrated with aircraft performance analyses have shown that there exists a tradeoff between power density and energy density for fuel cell powered aircraft with endurances on the order of hours 28 .…”

Section: B Design Space Exploration -Powerplant Energy Densitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell powerplants powered by compressed hydrogen have particular advantages over other technologies available for long-endurance aircraft because PEM fuel cell systems have high specific energy, high efficiency, improved environmental performance and can be incorporated into rechargeable energy storage systems 2 . Where advanced batteries can reach electrical output energy densities of 200Wh/kg at the module level 3 , fuel cells can achieve >800Wh/kg at the system level 4,5 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design Space Exploration of Small-Scale PEM Fuel Cell Long Endurance Aircraft

Moffitt

Bradley

Mavris

et al. 2006

6th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration and Operations Conference (ATIO)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Due to their high energy density, proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell systems are becoming increasingly attractive as the primary powerplant for low-power, long-endurance aircraft applications. Although PEM fuel cell technology has been applied for automotive and stationary use, limited design and experimental work has been performed and documented for actual aircraft applications. In order to better understand the design and performance tradeoffs for PEM fuel cell powered aircraft, a high-level conceptual design study of small-scale long-endurance aircraft is performed. This study builds upon design lessons learned through the development and flight testing of a PEM-powered demonstrator aircraft designed and built by the Georgia Institute of Technology. The study focuses on identifying and exploring the concept design space appropriate for small unmanned air vehicles with ranges of up to 5000 km flying at low altitudes with endurances of up to 64 hours. A Quality Function Deployment is used in conjunction with a Matrix of Alternatives to define multiple competing aircraft configurations based on current advanced technologies in PEM fuel cells, hydrogen storage, electric propulsion, aircraft design, and structural materials. A baseline propulsion system consisting of a liquid cooled PEM fuel cell with compressed hydrogen storage powering multiple electric tractor propeller motors was chosen. The corresponding baseline aerodynamic configuration consisted of a high-aspect ratio tapered wing with multiple tractor propellers. Eleven design variables governing the powerplant, propulsion, and aircraft design were chosen and used as inputs to a combination of surrogate and physics based models that were solved using fixed point iteration. Using range, endurance, climb rate, and aircraft mass as metrics, the problem was optimized using a sequential unconstrained minimization technique (SUMT) with an extended interior penalty function using a simplex optimization search algorithm. Several design constraints were active at the optimal solutions for both range and endurance. Results showed that the design was primarily driven by design variables governing hydrogen storage. The analysis also showed that optimizing a design for energy density did not produce the best aircraft design for either long range or long endurance. With the same payload, aircraft optimized for range and endurance were much smaller and had better range, endurance, and climb performance than aircraft optimized for energy density.

show abstract

“…One of the proposed benefits of fuel cell powerplants is that the specification of the energy content of the system is relatively independent of the power content of the system [19]. Hydrogen tanks, which dictate energy content, can be sized separately from the fuel cell, which dictates power content.…”

Section: Specific Energy and Specific Power Tradeoffmentioning

confidence: 99%

Validated Modeling and Synthesis of Medium-Scale Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell Aircraft

Bradley

Moffitt

Mavris

et al. 2006

ASME 2006 Fourth International Conference on Fuel Cell Science, Engineering and Technology, Parts a and B

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper describes a methodology for design and optimization of a polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The focus of this paper is the optimization of the fuel cell propulsion system and hydrogen storage system for a baseline aircraft. Physics-based models, and experimentally-derived sub-system performance data are used to characterize the performance of each configuration within a design space. The results of aircraft synthesis and performance modeling routines are used to create response surface equations where tradeoffs among component specifications can be explored. Significant tradeoffs between fuel cell performance, hydrogen storage and aircraft aerodynamic and propulsion system design are presented. Validation and test results from a proof-of-concept fuel cell UAV propulsion system are presented. Validated models of the fuel cell and aircraft systems are used to predict the performance of fuel cell UAVs at the scale of the baseline aircraft.

show abstract

Emissionless Aircraft- Requirements and Challenges

Cited by 16 publications

References 0 publications

Preliminary Study of Emissions Regulation Effects on Future Commercial Aircraft Designs

Preliminary Study of Emissions Regulation Effects on Future Commercial Aircraft Designs

Design Space Exploration of Small-Scale PEM Fuel Cell Long Endurance Aircraft

Validated Modeling and Synthesis of Medium-Scale Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cell Aircraft

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About