IMPLEMENTATION OF DISTRIBUTED ELECTRIC PROPULSION ON A GENERAL AVIATION AIRCRAFT

Abstract

© 2021 32nd Congress of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, ICAS 2021. All rights reserved.With an always increasing demand for more efficient aircraft due to both economic and environmental purposes, academy and industry are studying hybrid-electric and full-electric concepts to explore new aircraft design opportunities. This paper expands on the results of previous publications, using a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan as a platform for the implementation of distributed electric propulsion to enable the use of high-lift propellers. The design space is swept to evaluate the impacts of the technology in wing weight, propulsive system sizing and weight as well as in payload, range and fuel consumption on different simulated missions. The models are integrated using SUAVE, a conceptual level design environment, which is used to integrate the aircraft model and run the simulations. Results show that generating enough extra lift with the propellers require large amounts of power, resulting in a heavy propulsive system that hinders the payload and range capabilities of the aircraft and are unfortunately not compensated by the small aerodynamic gains generated by this configuration.

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