Abstract
Narrow body and wide body aircraft are responsible for more than 75% of aviation greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and aviation, itself, was responsible for about 2.5% of all GHG emissions in the United States in 2018. This situation becomes worse when considering a 4-5% annual growth in air travel. Electrified aircraft is clearly a promising solution to combat the GHG challenge; thus, the trend is to eliminate all but electrical forms of energy in aircraft power distribution systems. However, electrification adds tremendously to the complexity of aircraft electric power systems (EPS), which is dramatically changing in our journey from conventional aircraft to more electric aircraft (MEA) and all electric aircraft (AEA). In this article, we provide an in-depth discussion on MEA/AEA EPS: electric propulsion, distributed propulsion systems (DPS), EPS voltage levels, power supplies, and EPS architectures are discussed. Publications on power flow (PF) analysis and management of EPS are reviewed, and an initial schematic of a potential aircraft EPS with electric propulsion is proposed. In this regard, we also briefly review the components required for MEA/AEA EPS, including power electronics (PE) converters, electric machines, electrochemical energy units, circuit breakers (CBs), and wiring harness. A comprehensive review of each of the components mentioned above or other topics except for those related to steady state power flow in MEA/AEA EPS is out of this article's scope and should be found somewhere else. At the close of the paper, some challenges in the path towards AEA are presented. Unless the discussed challenges are satisfactorily addressed and solved, arriving at an AEA that can properly operate over commercial missions will not be possible.
Highlights
NITED nations (UN) sustainable development goals outline 17 major goals to fulfill by 2030 that address global challenges; goal 13 is directed towards taking urgent actions to combat climate change [1]
An electric power systems (EPS) is comprised of different components, such as power electronics (PE) converters, electric machines, electrochemical energy units, circuit breakers (CBs, known as solid-state breakers [10] or bus-tie breakers [11]), different loads, etc., that are all connected to appropriate busses and are needed to be taken into consideration when analyzing an EPS
It should be noted that a comprehensive review and discussion on stability in more electric aircraft (MEA)/all electric aircraft (AEA) is beyond this article, and we briefly reviewed and discussed some important aspects of stability; a detailed review should be found somewhere else
Summary
All electric aircraft (AEA) provide additional benefits to those of MEA, such as zero emissions and even cheaper travel cost as a direct result of removing the need for fuel. In an AEA, will all replaceable systems be replaced with their electrical alternatives, propulsive power is provided that utilizes electrochemical energy units such as batteries and fuel cells [9]. An EPS is comprised of different components, such as power electronics (PE) converters, electric machines, electrochemical energy units, circuit breakers (CBs, known as solid-state breakers [10] or bus-tie breakers [11]), different loads, etc., that are all connected to appropriate busses and are needed to be taken into consideration when analyzing an EPS.
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