Electrical Energy Storage Design Space Exploration for a Hybrid-Electric Six Passenger Quadrotor
- Resource Type
- Conference
- Authors
- Thomas, George L.; Malone, Brian P.; Chapman, Jeffryes W.; Csank, Jeffrey T.
- Source
- 2022 IEEE Transportation Electrification Conference & Expo (ITEC) Transportation Electrification Conference & Expo (ITEC), 2022 IEEE. :319-324 Jun, 2022
- Subject
- Aerospace
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Power, Energy and Industry Applications
Transportation
Costs
Redundancy
Internal combustion engines
Maintenance engineering
Reliability engineering
Power system reliability
Batteries
- Language
Hybrid-electric architectures are a promising means to achieve clean and efficient aircraft propulsion needed for small, short-range electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) class vehicles. This paper explores the design space for a six-passenger quadrotor hybrid-electric propulsion system and shows that hybrid architectures that are more efficient than engine-only architectures can be built with near-term battery technology (~150 Wh/kg at the pack level). Data obtained shows that hybrid-electric propulsion systems can achieve 28% block fuel reduction and 27% total energy cost savings over a 120 nautical mile (nmi) mission compared to conventional turboshaft architectures. This work suggests that hybrids are likely the most efficient architectures that can be produced in the near term for this class of vehicle and motivates further development in this area.