Assessment of Hybrid Airplane Configurations based on In-Flight Performance

Abstract

The emergence of hybrid fuel-electric airplanes is meant to reduce the effect of oil price volatility, as well as to protect the environment by reducing exhaust gas emissions. In the present work, the feasibility of multiple hybrid configurations is investigated based on flight performance. For this purpose, a numerical model of the airplane is built and simulated. In order to find the most feasible hybrid configuration; hybridization architectures such as series, parallel, and combined series-parallel are explored. In addition, the hybrid models are compared with both conventional (all-fuel) and full electric airplanes in all flight phases; including takeoff, climb, cruise, descent, and landing. Impact on airplane weight resulting from additional equipment such as batteries, motors and inverter/converter is investigated as well. The performance of the combined series-parallel hybrid architecture is found to provide better performance than the other configurations including conventional, full electric, series hybrid, and parallel hybrid.