Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ELICA (ELectric Innovative Commuter Aircraft)
Período documentado: 2021-04-01 hasta 2022-09-30
The ELICA research project activities are focused on the conceptual design of a 19 passenger commuter aircraft based on alternative propulsion concepts, targeting near-zero CO2 emissions. The project aligns with the environmental expectations of the European Commission towards the aeronautical industry formulated in Flightpath 2050, and is in line with the economic objectives of the European Commission to safeguard high-quality jobs in the aerospace sectors by strengthening the technological leadership and the competitiveness.
The high-level objective of ELICA is to provide a concept design of a 19 passenger commuter aircraft with near-zero emissions in terms of CO2, NOX, and noise. The concept should be:
• environmentally friendly, i.e. with measurable reduction in estimated emission values;
• economically feasible, i.e. the aircraft requirements are derived from the market demands;
• and technologically innovative, i.e. the flexibility in the aircraft design space provided by new propulsion technologies should be explored and exploited.
The final concept design will pave the way to an innovative aircraft demonstrator. It will be an important step stone to strengthen the technology leadership of the European aeronautical industry, in the global race for the next-generation efficient commuter aircraft for regional mobility.
The high-level objective of ELICA is to provide a concept design of a 19 passenger commuter aircraft with near-zero emissions in terms of CO2, NOX, and noise. The concept should be:
• environmentally friendly, i.e. with measurable reduction in estimated emission values;
• economically feasible, i.e. the aircraft requirements are derived from the market demands;
• and technologically innovative, i.e. the flexibility in the aircraft design space provided by new propulsion technologies should be explored and exploited.
The final concept design will pave the way to an innovative aircraft demonstrator. It will be an important step stone to strengthen the technology leadership of the European aeronautical industry, in the global race for the next-generation efficient commuter aircraft for regional mobility.
Market Opportunities and Aircraft Requirements
The economic feasibility study (Deliverable D2.1) conducted within ELICA project showed that the emerging Regional Air Mobility (RAM), i.e. the concept of utilising the point-to-point connection of airfields to reduce travel times significantly. Based on the analysis of the two above mentioned emerging market segments, Top Level Aircraft Requirements (TLARs) were derived for ELICA. For more explanation it is referred to the Deliverable D2.2.
Power Train Architectures
Aircraft pre-design is an iterative process, which requires fast responding models for component mass, performance, and size to keep computational effort on a manageable level. Response surfaces for mass, performance and geometry parameters were calculated for each components of the electric power train system. These response surfaces will be used for further aircraft design studies (Deliverable D3.3). Thermal management system (TMS) design is an integral part of the aircraft design, influencing the performance, weight and balance of the vehicle. Two realistic TMS concepts have been designed for the 2025 and 2035 aircraft configuration with weight and efficiency estimations fed back into the aircraft design (Deliverable D3.4).
Aircraft Conceptual Design and Analysis
The above-mentioned components of the aircraft design chain were developed and refined during the ELICA project progress. The inputs generated in Work Packages 3 were valuable and essential for on-going investigations. UNINA and SMARTUP integrated the development work of SISW and RRD into the UNINA’s aircraft design chain and validated the implementation. This work laid a solid base for the increased fidelity analyses and MDO applications that will allow the determination of the final aircraft configurations for a 19 passenger commuter aircraft hybrid-electric and full-electric targeting near-zero emissions utilizing the available technologies enabling EIS for 2025 and 2035 (Deliverable D4.2). Based on the expected available near-term and long-term technologies analysed in Task 5.1 a hybrid-electric aircraft concept was selected for EIS 2025, and a hydrogen fuel cell powered electric design was proposed for EIS 2035. An innovative TIP-DEP configuration, i.e. Distributed Electric Propulsion with TIP propulsors, has been pre-selected as a promising configuration.
Scientific, Technical Challenge and Trade-Off Analysis
The main objective was to collect all output coming perform trade-off analysis on system and performance parameters, based on market forecast, mobility scenarios and TLAR coming from WP2. SMARTUP has performed the analysis on system technologies suggested by RRD, and performance parameters suggested by UNINA, in order to obtain a complete overview and provide guidelines for future technologies development and analysis.
Finally, the main regulatory, technical and operational challenges which should be faced for a successful innovative 19 passengers commuter aircraft with near-zero emissions have been explored. The technical challenges arise from the fact that the implementation of hybrid-electric architectures introduces much higher levels of complexity than conventional propulsion. For the hydrogen power aircraft, not only the storage of hydrogen, but also the transport on board via tanks and lines to the fuel cell are critical points where increased safety measures must be taken. To sum it up, it’s not enough to provide feasible zero-emission aircraft concepts, the realization of zero-emission aviation requires a joint effort across the politics, industry and customers. For more details, it is referred to the Deliverable D5.3.
The economic feasibility study (Deliverable D2.1) conducted within ELICA project showed that the emerging Regional Air Mobility (RAM), i.e. the concept of utilising the point-to-point connection of airfields to reduce travel times significantly. Based on the analysis of the two above mentioned emerging market segments, Top Level Aircraft Requirements (TLARs) were derived for ELICA. For more explanation it is referred to the Deliverable D2.2.
Power Train Architectures
Aircraft pre-design is an iterative process, which requires fast responding models for component mass, performance, and size to keep computational effort on a manageable level. Response surfaces for mass, performance and geometry parameters were calculated for each components of the electric power train system. These response surfaces will be used for further aircraft design studies (Deliverable D3.3). Thermal management system (TMS) design is an integral part of the aircraft design, influencing the performance, weight and balance of the vehicle. Two realistic TMS concepts have been designed for the 2025 and 2035 aircraft configuration with weight and efficiency estimations fed back into the aircraft design (Deliverable D3.4).
Aircraft Conceptual Design and Analysis
The above-mentioned components of the aircraft design chain were developed and refined during the ELICA project progress. The inputs generated in Work Packages 3 were valuable and essential for on-going investigations. UNINA and SMARTUP integrated the development work of SISW and RRD into the UNINA’s aircraft design chain and validated the implementation. This work laid a solid base for the increased fidelity analyses and MDO applications that will allow the determination of the final aircraft configurations for a 19 passenger commuter aircraft hybrid-electric and full-electric targeting near-zero emissions utilizing the available technologies enabling EIS for 2025 and 2035 (Deliverable D4.2). Based on the expected available near-term and long-term technologies analysed in Task 5.1 a hybrid-electric aircraft concept was selected for EIS 2025, and a hydrogen fuel cell powered electric design was proposed for EIS 2035. An innovative TIP-DEP configuration, i.e. Distributed Electric Propulsion with TIP propulsors, has been pre-selected as a promising configuration.
Scientific, Technical Challenge and Trade-Off Analysis
The main objective was to collect all output coming perform trade-off analysis on system and performance parameters, based on market forecast, mobility scenarios and TLAR coming from WP2. SMARTUP has performed the analysis on system technologies suggested by RRD, and performance parameters suggested by UNINA, in order to obtain a complete overview and provide guidelines for future technologies development and analysis.
Finally, the main regulatory, technical and operational challenges which should be faced for a successful innovative 19 passengers commuter aircraft with near-zero emissions have been explored. The technical challenges arise from the fact that the implementation of hybrid-electric architectures introduces much higher levels of complexity than conventional propulsion. For the hydrogen power aircraft, not only the storage of hydrogen, but also the transport on board via tanks and lines to the fuel cell are critical points where increased safety measures must be taken. To sum it up, it’s not enough to provide feasible zero-emission aircraft concepts, the realization of zero-emission aviation requires a joint effort across the politics, industry and customers. For more details, it is referred to the Deliverable D5.3.
Air s.Pace (ASP) delivered the market study and the economic analysis for a new hybrid-electric 19 PAX commuter aircraft. Based on the market analysis and the benchmarking of existing 19 PAX commuter aircraft TLARs were derived for the ELICA design. Innovative methodologies and sophisticated preliminary design tools have been developed at Rolls-Royce Deutschland (RRD), so that electric power system and its components can be designed and evaluated very efficiently based on requirement inputs derived from the aircraft and system levels. The methodology enabled the fast generation of an extensive data base (response surface) with ten thousand of data points, so that the optimizer can quickly receive the characteristics of the requested sub-system designs during the aircraft design process. A new methodology was developed by Siemens Industry Software NV (SISW) for generating high-level powertrain architectures and for sizing corresponding components in a fault-tolerant way. One of the challenges for the hybrid-electric aircraft design is the lack of established design methodologies that allow the accurate evaluation of the advantages of alternative propulsion architectures. The conceptual aircraft design chain of University Naples Federico II (UNINA) is proved to be capable for capturing this aspect. By integrating the innovative system architecture and component modelling methodologies developed within ELICA, UNINA extended the capability of their sophisticated aircraft conceptual design chain for the design of hybrid- and full-electric aircraft.
Based on the innovative design tools developed during the project period, UNINA and SmartUp were able to perform aircraft design and optimization studies which resulted in two innovate 19pax commuter aircraft designs reflecting the technological maturity for aircraft entry into service in 2025 and 2035. The aircraft concept for 2025 is a hybrid-electric design using combined gas turbine and battery as energy sources, while the concept for 2035 is an all-electric design using high temperature fuel cell as energy source. With all the results delivered and progress made, the ELICA partners were enabled to continue to contribute to low and/or zero emission aviation transportations. As an example it should be mentioned that Rolls-Royce announced in July 2022 to deliver a fuel-cell electric aircraft demonstration by 2025.
Based on the innovative design tools developed during the project period, UNINA and SmartUp were able to perform aircraft design and optimization studies which resulted in two innovate 19pax commuter aircraft designs reflecting the technological maturity for aircraft entry into service in 2025 and 2035. The aircraft concept for 2025 is a hybrid-electric design using combined gas turbine and battery as energy sources, while the concept for 2035 is an all-electric design using high temperature fuel cell as energy source. With all the results delivered and progress made, the ELICA partners were enabled to continue to contribute to low and/or zero emission aviation transportations. As an example it should be mentioned that Rolls-Royce announced in July 2022 to deliver a fuel-cell electric aircraft demonstration by 2025.