Aircraft propulsion electrification is currently considered by industry and academia as one of the most promising strategies to reduce air transport emissions and to increase overall efficiency levels. In the past decade, a multitude of papers was published in this subject, most of them indicating encouraging fuel burn benefits versus conventional, fossil-fuel based propulsion systems, when incorporating future technologies and especially when novel aircraft configurations and synergistic propulsive-airframe integration are used. However, a much smaller effort has been applied to the economical aspects of hybrid and full electric propulsion, which is crucial for a successful product introduction. The present paper describes the modelling of a baseline general aviation type aircraft and its electrified propulsion derivatives, exploring different electrification strategies. Analyses are performed at aircraft level, comparing recurring and cash operating costs of the considered concepts for several cost and durability scenarios. It is shown that while considerable CO2 reductions may be achieved in some electrification strategies, important improvements on economical figures of merit are needed in order to make electrified propulsion competitive on a cost perspective. This is because electric architectures tend to increase costs: turboelectric increases recurring equipment costs, while hybrid-electric increase direct maintenance costs, especially at higher degrees of energy hybridization.
Economical Aspects of Aircraft Propulsion Electrification
2021-08-11
1110687 byte
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
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