Battery-driven propulsion: System design and assessment of maintenance requirements

Abstract

Despite incremental improvements on fuel efficiency and regulatory requirements of the European Green Deal, the aviation industry struggles to significantly reduce its emissions due to high technological maturity of conventional propulsion systems and continuously increasing air traffic. Accordingly, more disruptive technologies of sustainable energy carriers, e.g., battery-electric propulsion systems (EPS), need to be taken into consideration to face these ambitious climate targets. However, currently, there is no such system design used in commercial aviation, partially because of high uncertainties regarding its impact on maintenance. Although maintenance implications are an important aspect in the development of sustainable propulsion concepts with their significant contribution to the overall operating costs, they have not yet been addressed sufficiently. With this study, this knowledge gap is addressed by estimating changes towards scheduled maintenance activities when substituting a kerosene-based with a battery-powered propulsion system. Therefore, an initial system layout with strong focus on regulatory compliance is defined and serves as our basis to derive necessary maintenance actions using established industry practices. Once those are determined, their economic implications will be assessed in a comparative analysis with an Airbus A320 legacy system. Therefore, this work delivers insights into (a) key aspects for the EPS design process to ensure regulatory compliance, (b) maintenance implications for specific design assumptions, and (c) anticipated changes of corresponding maintenance efforts. These results can serve as a basis for future detailed design and development processes of electric drive systems in order to incorporate maintenance implications in an early design stages. Furthermore, the examined tendencies can be used for additional assessments regarding cost efficiency and equipment availability. Finally, the methodology is independent of the underlying technology concept and as such is transferable to other aircraft and sustainable energy carrier concepts.