Coupled Simulation of Electric Flight Dynamics and Physics Based Battery Model for Electric Aircraft Battery Pack Sizing Analysis

Abstract

Electrification of aircraft and aviation systems is a thriving area of research and technology development in recent years1. According to the Airbus Global Market Forecast, air traffic will double every 15 years, leading to increasing fuel consumption causing severe impact due to greenhouse gases and carbon emission2. Besides the environmental impact, as the international demand for fuel increases, and the fact that petroleum resources are limited, fuel prices are projected to rise. On the other side, the drop in the cost of lithium ion batteries makes electric aircraft feasible to commercialize now. This necessitates studying the battery pack sizing problem to build efficient Energy Management System (EMS) for electric aircraft.There is a significant amount of research on EMS for electric aircraft. Most of the current literature related to electric aircraft modeling considers the battery voltage to be linear3. This may lead to inaccurate estimation of state of charge (SOC), a key state variable for batteries and battery pack. In this work, we perform coupled simulation studies of the longitudinal flight dynamics and physics-based battery model (single particle model)4 ,5. This coupling enables accurate estimation of battery pack state of charge. The simulation studies are performed to understand the interplay between battery pack configuration/design parameters and variables/parameters related to flight dynamics, such as altitude, distance, flight path angle, and velocity. We also compare the SOC prediction of the battery pack using single particle model and dynamic empirical battery model. This work will be extended to develop efficient and robust EMS for electric aircraft. Acknowledgements This research was supported by the Texas Materials Institute (TMI) at The University of Texas at Austin. References J. A. Rosero, J. A. Ortega, E. Aldabas, and L. Romeral, IEEE Aerosp. Electron. Syst. Mag., 22, 3–9 (2007).Airbus global market forecase. [Online]., https://www.airbus.com/aircraft/market/global-market-forecast.html.M. Kaptsov and L. Rodrigues, J. Guid. Control. Dyn., 41, 285–290 (2018).S. Santhanagopalan, Q. Guo, P. Ramadass, and R. E. White, J. Power Sources, 156, 620–628 (2006).V. Ramadesigan, P. W. C. Northrop, S. De, S. Santhanagopalan, R. D. Braatz, and V. R. Subramanian, J. Electrochem. Soc., 159, R31–R45 (2012).