Abstract
The increasing awareness of the environmental risks and costs due to the growing demand in aviation has prompted both academic and industrial research into short-term and long-term technologies which could help address the challenges. Among these, the more electric aircraft has been identified as a key design concept which would make aircraft more environmentally friendly and cost effective in the long run. Moreover, the notion of free-flight and optimised trajectories has been identified as a key operational concept which would help curb the environmental effects of aircraft as well as reduce overall costs. The research in this paper presents a methodology in which these two concepts can be coupled to study the benefits of more electric aircraft (MEA) flying optimised trajectories. A wide range of issues from aircraft performance, engine performance, airframe systems operation, power off-take penalties, emission modelling, optimisation algorithms and optimisation frameworks has been addressed throughout the study. The case study is based on a popular short haul flight between London Heathrow and Amsterdam Schiphol. The culmination of the study establishes the advantage of the MEA over conventional aircraft and also addresses the enhanced approach to the classical aircraft trajectory optimisation problem. The study shows that the operation procedures to achieve a minimum fuel burn are significantly different for a conventional aircraft and MEA. Trajectory optimisation reduced the fuel burn by 17.4% for the conventional aircraft and 12.2% for the more electric compared to the respective baseline cases. Within the constraints of the study, the minimum fuel burn trajectory for the MEA consumed 9.9% less fuel than the minimum fuel burn trajectory for the conventional aircraft.
Highlights
An aircraft with all secondary power systems operating electrically can be thought of as an all-electric aircraft (AEA)
Two separate studies done by airframe manufacturers and research centres such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) give an indication of what loads would be present in a typical all-electric secondary power system for civil passenger aircraft
It presents the gains that are achieved by including airframe system penalties within the optimisation loop and compares the optimum flight operations for conventional and more electric aircraft in terms of fuel burn, flight time and emissions
Summary
An aircraft with all secondary power systems operating electrically can be thought of as an all-electric aircraft (AEA). Feiner [1] suggests that aircraft with all-electric secondary power systems are expected to “cost less, be more reliable and be less expensive to operate”. He goes on to say that benefits include reduced design complexity, reduced parts count, easier aircraft modification and less environmental impact. It is further endorsed by Arguelles et al [2], where the MEA is highlighted as a pathway to achieving a lower environmental impact due to aviation. It means that future aircraft will possibly have most equipment operating through electrical power [3]
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