Abstract
This paper investigates the use of a passive in-flight battery thermal management system for an electric trainer aircraft. The proposed architecture employs a high-conductivity heat pipe coupled with a heat sink to provide cooling. Two different thermal management approaches are used for ground and flight operations. During charge, a ground-based air conditioning unit is used for thermal management. In flight, the system relies on preconditioning of the battery pack’s thermal mass to limit the temperature rise to acceptable levels, reducing the onboard weight and complexity associated with the battery thermal management system. To assess the performance of the proposed system over the entire lifetime of the battery pack, for both flight and ground operations, a coupled electrothermal-aging model based on semi-empirical data was created and validated experimentally for a notional touch-and-go training mission of a conceptual electric Cessna 172N. Resulting time-dependent performance diagrams presenting the evolution of maximum battery temperature, the ground turnaround time, and the capacity fade are used to determine operational constraints throughout the 2-year-and-a-half lifetime of the pack.
Published Version
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