MARKET ANALYSIS, TLARS SELECTION AND PRELIMINARY DESIGN INVESTIGATIONS FOR A REGIONAL HYBRID-ELECTRIC AIRCRAFT

This paper is framed in the context of the GENESIS Project (Gauging the ENvironmEntal Sustainability of electrIc and hybrid aircraft Systems), which complies with the European Union topic JTI-CS2-2020-CFP11-THT13 (Sustainability of Hybrid-Electric Aircraft System Architectures) as part of the Clean Sky 2 programme for Horizon 2020. The research work is focused on gauging the environmental sustainability of electric aircraft in a life-cycle-based, foresight perspective to support the development of a technology roadmap for transitioning towards sustainable and competitive electric aircraft systems. The analyzed aircraft segment is regional aircraft, to identify, design and assess prospectively the best energy storage and transmission topology. Different alternatives including batteries, fuel cells, hybrid and conventional powertrain technologies are evaluated and compared over different time horizons. In particular, the paper is focused on the description of the workflow implemented to define the Top-Level Aircraft Requirements for a non-conventional regional class hybrid-electric aircraft with 50 passengers, and on the identification of key specifications in terms of on-board energy storage, shaft power level and weight.