Conceptual Design Studies of Short Range Aircraft Configurations with Hybrid Electric Propulsion

Abstract

In this paper, the activities at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) related to the conceptual design studies of aircraft configurations with hybrid electric propulsion for a typical short range commercial transport mission in the scope of the European Clean Sky 2 program in the project Advanced Engine and Aircraft Configurations (ADEC) are described. The configurations analyzed incorporate different hybrid powertrain architectures consisting of gas turbines, electric machines, and batteries. Technologies as distributed propulsion are utilized for the boundary layer ingestion at the fuselage and for the powered yaw control. The synergetic effects of a canard configuration and a BLI propulsor at the rear of the fuselage are investigated. The focus of this paper is on the quantitative evaluation of configurations utilizing a conceptual aircraft sizing workflow built in the DLRs Remote Component Environment incorporating semi-empirical and low level physics based methods. In order to depict the rationale behind the investigated aircraft configurations, a brief overview of the foregone downselection process is given. The concepts evaluated in the scope of this work are shown. The multi-disciplinary overall aircraft sizing workflow is described. An overview of reference configurations is given. The design space studies of configurations with hybrid electric propulsion are presented. The most promising configurations are shown in detail and compared to the advanced reference aircraft. Finally, a conclusion is drawn and an outlook is presented.