Application of a turbo electric aircraft design environment for boosted turbofan aircraft configuration studies

Abstract

The current activities at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the associated consortium related to conceptual design studies of a Boosted Turbo fan configuration for a typical short range commission are presented. The Boosted Turbofan incorporates parallel hybrid architecture consisting of gas turbine, electric machines and batteries that add electric power to the fans of the engines. Furthermore, even though the fuel is substituted by electrical energy -at the cost of higher battery mass- the airframe of the aircraft is not notably impacted by the HEP system. Hence, it is a reasonable step towards hybrid electric aircraft due to less development risk. These current conceptual aircraft design activities regarding hybrid electric propulsion are organized within the scope of the project “Advanced Engine and Aircraft Configurations” (ADEC) of Clean Sky 2 at the DLR and the “Turbo electric Aircraft Design Environment” (TRADE) consortium consisting of the University of Nottingham, University of Märladalen, Technische Universität Berlin and coordinator Modelon Deutschland GmbH also part of Clean Sky 2. The DLR developed a conceptual aircraft sizing workflow built in the DLR’s “Remote Component Environment” (RCE) incorporating tools that are based on semi-empirical and low level physics based methods to evaluate hybrid electric aircraft. In contrast, the TRADE consortium developed a simulation and optimization design platform with physics-based models of higher fidelity for the analysis and optimization of individual systems and structural components. In contrast to ADEC, no overall aircraft design (OAD) is performed. Their optimization and assessment is based on an A320-like aircraft with a fixed airframe. There is interest to integrate the high-fidelity models into the DLR’s overall aircraft sizing workflow.