Person:

Mavris, Dimitri N.

Permanent Link

https://hdl.handle.net/1853/71501

Associated Organization(s)

Organizational Unit

Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering

Organizational Unit

Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL)

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8

Performance Assessment of a Distributed Electric Propulsion System for a Medium Altitude Long Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-08) Markov, Alexander A. ; Cinar, Gokcin ; Gladin, Jonathan C. ; Garcia, Elena ; Denney, Russell K. ; Mavris, Dimitri N. ; Patnaik, Sounya S.

Distributed propulsion systems are enabled by electrified aircraft and can provide aero-propulsive benefits. The magnitude and impact of these benefits rely on the location of propulsors on the vehicle, the amount of propulsive force generated by those propulsors, vehicle geometry, and the extent of hybridization of the propulsion system. With an increased number of degrees of freedom over conventionally electrified aircraft, the full extent of the impacts of this technology have not yet been explored, especially for military applications. This study builds on a previous one that implemented a series hybrid and turboeletric propulsion architecture on a turboprop UAV, by introducing a distributed electric propulsion system on the same vehicle. The previous study showed that with a hybrid architecture, the same performance, in terms of range and endurance, could not be achieved for a fixed gross take-off weight. This study investigates the impact of the distributed propulsion system with the goal of identifying the benefits over the previous vehicle and determining the level of technology required to break even with the conventional propulsion UAV. In incorporating the new propulsion system, the engine and main motor are resized, leading edge wing mounted propellers and motors are added to the configuration, and a new battery sizing strategy is implemented. Preliminary results show that, although this new system shows increased range and endurance over the series hybrid vehicle, it still falls short compared to the conventional vehicle with current levels of technology. Although improvements are needed to the electrical system technology to reduce the weight enough to break even with the conventional system, the new vehicle shows increased performance during climb, and has the capability to store energy during the mission. With the proper power management and battery utilization strategies, this system can provide reduction in fuel burn and improved performance during certain phases of the mission which could be beneficial for military applications.
Design and Analysis of the Thermal Management System of a Hybrid Turboelectric Regional Jet for the NASA ULI

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-08) Shi, Mingxuan ; Sanders, Mitchell ; Alahmad, Alan ; Perullo, Christopher ; Cinar, Gokcin ; Mavris, Dimitri N.

A team of researchers from multiple universities are collaborating on the demonstration of a hybrid turboelectric regional jet for 2030 under the NASA ULI Program. The thermal management is one of the major challenges for the development of such an electric propulsion concept. Existing studies hardly modeled the thermal management systems with the propulsion systems nor integrated it to the aircraft for system- and mission-level analyses. Therefore, it is very difficult to verify whether a design of the thermal management system is feasible and optimal based on current literature. To fill this gap, this paper presents a design of the thermal management system for the hybrid turboelectric regional jet under the ULI program and integrates it to the aircraft. The TMS is tested against the cooling requirements, where the thermal loads from the electric propulsion system are quantified through the whole mission. Potential solutions for peak thermal loads during takeoff and climb are also proposed and analyzed, where additional coolant or phase change materials are used. Moreover, the impacts of the TMS on the system- and mission-level performance are investigated by the presented integration approach as well. It is discovered that a basic oil-air thermal management system cannot fully remove the heat during the early mission segments. Using additional coolant or phase change materials as heat absorption can handle such heating problem, but penalty due to additional weight is added. It is found that greater penalties in fuel burn and takeoff weight are added by additional coolant solution than the phase change material solution.
An Update on Sizing and Performance Analysis of a Hybrid Turboelectric Regional Jet for the NASA ULI Program

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-08) Perullo, Christopher ; Shi, Mingxuan ; Cinar, Gokcin ; Alahmad, Alan ; Sanders, Mitchell ; Mavris, Dimitri N. ; Benzakein, Mike J.

Under the NASA University Leadership Initiative (ULI) program, a team of universities are collaborating on the advancement of technologies a hybrid turboelectric regional jet, with an intent to enter service in the 2030 timeframe. In the previous studies of the ULI program, the in-service benefits of the technologies under development were analyzed by integrating the technologies of interest to a 2030 regional jet with a hybrid turbo-electric distributed propulsion system. As the program has progressed, the projected performances for each technology and subsystem have been updated. This paper presents an update in the sizing and performance analysis of the regional jet with the hybrid turbo-electric distributed propulsion system, by integrating the updated values of the technologies and subsystems to the vehicle. The updates in this paper include the DC/AC conversion links, efficiency of generator and cabling losses, weight of the wires, the battery cooling through the environmental control system, motor and inverter cooling by the thermal management system, and the redundancy strategy of the propulsion system. The updates of the results from the integrated model include the overall efficiency of the propulsion system, mission fuel savings, mission energy flow distribution, and the optimal hybridization rate in climb and cruise. The overall fuel saving benefit for the target 600-nmi mission is 19.9% compared to the baseline aircraft.
Feasibility Assessments of a Hybrid Turboelectric Medium Altitude Long Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-08) Cinar, Gokcin ; Markov, Alexander A. ; Gladin, Jonathan C. ; Garcia, Elena ; Mavris, Dimitri N. ; Patnaik, Soumya S.

Electrified propulsion systems can provide potential environmental and performance benefits for future aircraft. The choice of the right propulsion architecture and the power management strategy depends on a number of factors, the airframe, electrification objectives and metrics of interest being the most critical ones. Therefore, the generic advantages and disadvantages of various electrified propulsion architectures must be quantified to assess feasibility and any possible benefits. Moreover, the objectives and the metrics of interest can be different for military applications than commercial ones. This research investigates the feasibility of turboelectric and hybrid turboelectric propulsion architectures integrated within a medium altitude long endurance surveillance unmanned aerial vehicle. The electrified propulsion system is desired to provide the same endurance and takeoff and landing field length characteristics of the baseline aircraft. This paper presents the results of the first phase of this research where only the electrified propulsion system is sized while the airframe is kept fixed. Physics-based models and a generic mission analysis methodology are used to evaluate the performance of the major subsystems of the propulsion system and to provide a full flight mission history. A state of the art rechargeable battery is employed for the hybrid case. Various power management strategies where the battery is discharged and charged in different flight segments are explored for varying sizes of battery packs. Results indicate that, while none of the architectures can offset the added weight and the efficiency factors of the electrical components as expected, the hybrid turboelectric propulsion architecture can provide fuel burn and performance benefits when sized for, and operated under, a specific set of power management strategies.
Transient Surrogate Modeling for Thermal Management Systems

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-01) Van Zwieten, Andrew ; Cinar, Gokcin ; Garcia, Elena ; Gladin, Jonathan ; Mavris, Dimitri N.

In typical multidisciplinary design optimization problems, with varying missions, aerodynamic data, engine data, Thermal Management Systems (TMS), and other parameters it can take upwards of millions of runs to cover the full design space which result in extremely large computational burden, reducing the effectiveness of the design process. The objective of this work is to create a technical approach, leveraging existing concepts in surrogate modeling and other relevant fields, for the creation of a Transient TMS surrogate model. This work utilizes Design of Experiments to intelligently sample a model’s design space, surrogate modeling to enable instantaneous predictions, and state space modeling to allows surrogates to carry predictions forward. By leveraging these three components, a six step methodology was developed. This paper explains the developed methodology with an application on a notional Transient TMS. We first pre-process the time dependent data and possible correlations between input variables, then break down a set of input variables into a series of step functions which represent input schedules in a fraction of the time. We create Artificial Neural Network models to predict the future response of a metric of interest using the current response of both the input step functions and the corresponding output. We finally test whether the surrogates which were created with step functions could be used to predict the future response of the metric of interest for a full time trace of a sample aircraft mission. We show that this methodology yields acceptable predictions for both the partial and full time trace, with a maximum error of 5% and 10%, respectively.
Sizing and Optimization of Novel General Aviation Vehicles and Propulsion System Architectures

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018) Cinar, Gokcin ; Cai, Yu ; Chakraborty, Imon ; Mavris, Dimitri N.

The drive for more efficient flying vehicles in all categories may necessitate a significant departure from the tube-and-wing or rotary-wing norms that have been the mainstay of aviation for many decades. This poses challenges for predicting the aerodynamic characteristics and the weight build-up of such unconventional vehicles in early design phases. Additionally, the design and assessment of advanced/unconventional all-electric or hybrid-electric propulsion system architectures require consideration of degrees-of-freedom and trade-offs that do not arise for conventional purely fuel-powered architectures. Thus, there is a need for a flexible vehicle sizing, trade-off, and optimization capability that is not limited to a single vehicle configuration (e.g., fixed-wing, rotary-wing) or propulsion system architecture. To be suitable for the early design phases, such a framework must evaluate relatively quickly, not require extensive definition of the vehicle, and lend itself to customizable design optimization setups. This paper describes the initial creation of such a capability and demonstrates its application to design trade-offs for a General Aviation vehicle with an advanced propulsion system architecture.
Sizing, Integration and Performance Evaluation of Hybrid Electric Propulsion Subsystem Architectures

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-06) Cinar, Gokcin ; Mavris, Dimitri N. ; Emeneth, Mathias ; Schneegans, Alexander ; Riediger, Carsten ; Fefermann, Yann ; Isikveren, Askin

This paper presents a methodology for the sizing and synthesis of power generation and distribution (PG&D) subsystems. The PG&D subsystem models developed in a previous work done by the authors were applied within a parallel hybrid electric propulsion architecture using the Dornier 328 as the baseline aircraft. The hybridization took place only during the cruise segment. Analyses were performed in Pacelab SysArc, a system architecture design tool, to assess the impact of different hybrid electric propulsion architectures and changing PG&D subsystem characteristics at aircraft and mission levels. To this end, sensitivity analysis was conducted to reveal the sensitivity to the subsystem level characteristics. Moreover, six different architectures were compared in terms of their mission level performance. These architectures included the PG&D subsystems with current state of the art technology, NASA 15-year technology goals and a more advanced battery technology. Although neither the current state of the art PG&D subsystems nor NASA 15-year technology goals were advanced enough to match the design range requirement of the baseline aircraft, some of the competing architectures met the practical range target while enjoying substantial amount of fuel reductions. Finally, it was observed that in order to reach a break-even point in terms of the design mission range, a battery specific energy of 5 kWh/kg was necessary for a 50% level of hybridization during cruise. In this work the Dornier 328 was used as a testbed, however the methodology can be generalized for all parallel hybrid electric propulsion applications.
Development of Parametric Power Generation and Distribution Subsystem Models at the Conceptual Aircraft Design Stage

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2017-01) Cinar, Gokcin ; Mavris, Dimitri N. ; Emeneth, Mathias ; Schneegans, Alexander ; Fefermann, Yann

The ongoing efforts to reduce aviation related greenhouse gas emissions and fuel burn have led to advancements in power generation and distribution (PG&D) subsystem technology. Due to the absence of historical data, PG&D subsystem models must be created from first-order analysis without compromising crucial information on their characteristics. This paper demonstrates the development of parametric, physics-based subsystem models such as battery, electric motor, power distribution and management system, and propeller speed reduction unit for rapid and low-cost sizing, simulation and analysis at early design stages. A special focus was put on rechargeable battery technology and implementing a dynamic (rather than steady-state) discharge behavior into the propulsion architecture. A methodology to integrate the developed subsystem models was presented. A sample application was also provided to demonstrate the combined capabilities of the models. To this end, the models were applied within a sample parallel hybrid electric architecture using Dornier 328 as a test bed. The subsystem behaviors under varying power requirements were then analyzed. Finally, the importance of having more dimensionality at the subsystem level at early design stages was highlighted by comparing the results of two different architectural choices.