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Impact of Battery Performance on the Initial Sizing of Hybrid-Electric General Aviation Aircraft
(2020)
Studies suggest that hybrid-electric aircraft have the potential to generate fewer emissions and be inherently quieter when compared to conventional aircraft. By operating combustion engines together with an electric propulsion system, synergistic benefits can be obtained. However, the performance of hybrid-electric aircraft is still constrained by a battery’s energy density and discharge rate. In this paper, the influence of battery performance on the gross mass for a four-seat general aviation aircraft with a hybrid-electric propulsion system is analyzed. For this design study, a high-level approach is chosen, using an innovative initial sizing methodology to determine the minimum required aircraft mass for a specific set of requirements and constraints. Only the peak-load shaving operational strategy is analyzed. Both parallel- and serial-hybrid propulsion configurations are considered for two different missions. The specific energy of the battery pack is varied from 200 to 1,000 W⋅h/kg, while the discharge time, and thus the normalized discharge rating (C-rating), is varied between 30 min (2C discharge rate) and 2 min (30C discharge rate). With the peak-load shaving operating strategy, it is desirable for hybrid-electric aircraft to use a light, low capacity battery system to boost performance. For this case, the battery’s specific power rating proved to be of much higher importance than for full electric designs, which have high capacity batteries. Discharge ratings of 20C allow a significant take-off mass reduction aircraft. The design point moves to higher wing loadings and higher levels of hybridization if batteries with advanced technology are used.
Purpose
Globally, a detrimental shift in cardiovascular disease risk factors and a higher mortality level are reported in some black populations. The retinal microvasculature provides early insight into the pathogenesis of systemic vascular diseases, but it is unclear whether retinal vessel calibers and acute retinal vessel functional responses differ between young healthy black and white adults.
Methods
We included 112 black and 143 white healthy normotensive adults (20–30 years). Retinal vessel calibers (central retinal artery and vein equivalent (CRAE and CRVE)) were calculated from retinal images and vessel caliber responses to flicker light induced provocation (FLIP) were determined. Additionally, ambulatory blood pressure (BP), anthropometry and blood samples were collected.
Results
The groups displayed similar 24 h BP profiles and anthropometry (all p > .24). Black participants demonstrated a smaller CRAE (158 ± 11 vs. 164 ± 11 MU, p < .001) compared to the white group, whereas CRVE was similar (p = .57). In response to FLIP, artery maximal dilation was greater in the black vs. white group (5.6 ± 2.1 vs. 3.3 ± 1.8%; p < .001).
Conclusions
Already at a young age, healthy black adults showed narrower retinal arteries relative to the white population. Follow-up studies are underway to show if this will be related to increased risk for hypertension development. The reason for the larger vessel dilation responses to FLIP in the black population is unclear and warrants further investigation.
Recent Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) design procedures rely on full aircraft steady-state Reynolds-Averaged-Navier-Stokes (RANS) analyses in early design stages. Small sensor turrets are included in such simulations, even though their aerodynamic properties show highly unsteady behavior. Very little is known about the effects of this approach on the simulation outcomes of small turrets. Therefore, the flow around a model turret at a Reynolds number of 47,400 is simulated with a steady-state RANS approach and compared to experimental data. Lift, drag, and surface pressure show good agreement with the experiment. The RANS model predicts the separation location too far downstream and shows a larger recirculation region aft of the body. Both characteristic arch and horseshoe vortex structures are visualized and qualitatively match the ones found by the experiment. The Reynolds number dependence of the drag coefficient follows the trend of a sphere within a distinct range. The outcomes indicate that a steady-state RANS model of a small sensor turret is able to give results that are useful for UAV engineering purposes but might not be suited for detailed insight into flow properties.
Digital Image Correlation (DIC) is a powerful tool used to evaluate displacements and deformations in a non-intrusive manner. By comparing two images, one of the undeformed reference state of a specimen and another of the deformed target state, the relative displacement between those two states is determined. DIC is well known and often used for post-processing analysis of in-plane displacements and deformation of specimen. Increasing the analysis speed to enable real-time DIC analysis will be beneficial and extend the field of use of this technique.
Here we tested several combinations of the most common DIC methods in combination with different parallelization approaches in MATLAB and evaluated their performance to determine whether real-time analysis is possible with these methods. To reflect improvements in computing technology different hardware settings were also analysed. We found that implementation problems can reduce the efficiency of a theoretically superior algorithm such that it becomes practically slower than a suboptimal algorithm. The Newton-Raphson algorithm in combination with a modified Particle Swarm algorithm in parallel image computation was found to be most effective. This is contrary to theory, suggesting that the inverse-compositional Gauss-Newton algorithm is superior. As expected, the Brute Force Search algorithm is the least effective method. We also found that the correct choice of parallelization tasks is crucial to achieve improvements in computing speed. A poorly chosen parallelisation approach with high parallel overhead leads to inferior performance. Finally, irrespective of the computing mode the correct choice of combinations of integerpixel and sub-pixel search algorithms is decisive for an efficient analysis. Using currently available hardware realtime analysis at high framerates remains an aspiration.
An overview on dry low NOx micromix combustor development for hydrogen-rich gas turbine applications
(2019)
Impact of electric propulsion technology and mission requirements on the performance of VTOL UAVs
(2018)
One of the engineering challenges in aviation is the design of transitioning vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft. Thrust-borne flight implies a higher mass fraction of the propulsion system, as well as much increased energy consumption in the take-off and landing phases. This mass increase is typically higher for aircraft with a separate lift propulsion system than for aircraft that use the cruise propulsion system to support a dedicated lift system. However, for a cost–benefit trade study, it is necessary to quantify the impact the VTOL requirement and propulsion configuration has on aircraft mass and size. For this reason, sizing studies are conducted. This paper explores the impact of considering a supplemental electric propulsion system for achieving hovering flight. Key variables in this study, apart from the lift system configuration, are the rotor disk loading and hover flight time, as well as the electrical systems technology level for both batteries and motors. Payload and endurance are typically used as the measures of merit for unmanned aircraft that carry electro-optical sensors, and therefore the analysis focuses on these particular parameters.
For fuel flexibility enhancement hydrogen represents a possible alternative gas turbine fuel within future low emission power generation, in case of hydrogen production by the use of renewable energy sources such as wind energy or biomass. Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. (KHI) has research and development projects for future hydrogen society; production of hydrogen gas, refinement and liquefaction for transportation and storage, and utilization with gas turbine / gas engine for the generation of electricity. In the development of hydrogen gas turbines, a key technology is the stable and low NOx hydrogen combustion, especially Dry Low Emission (DLE) or Dry Low NOx (DLN) hydrogen combustion. Due to the large difference in the physical properties of hydrogen compared to other fuels such as natural gas, well established gas turbine combustion systems cannot be directly applied for DLE hydrogen combustion. Thus, the development of DLE hydrogen combustion technologies is an essential and challenging task for the future of hydrogen fueled gas turbines. The DLE Micro-Mix combustion principle for hydrogen fuel has been in development for many years to significantly reduce NOx emissions. This combustion principle is based on cross-flow mixing of air and gaseous hydrogen which reacts in multiple miniaturized “diffusion-type” flames. The major advantages of this combustion principle are the inherent safety against flashback and the low NOx-emissions due to a very short residence time of the reactants in the flame region of the micro-flames.
On the flight performance impact of landing gear drag reduction methods for unmanned air vehicles
(2018)
The flight performance impact of three different landing gear configurations on a small, fixed-wing UAV is analyzed with a combination of RANS CFD calculations and an incremental flight performance algorithm. A standard fixed landing gear configuration is taken as a baseline, while the influence of retracting the landing gear or applying streamlined fairings is investigated. A retraction leads to a significant parasite drag reduction, while also fairings promise large savings. The increase in lift-to-drag ratio is reduced at high lift coefficients due to the influence of induced drag. All configurations are tested on three different design missions with an incremental flight performance algorithm. A trade-off study is performed using the retracted or faired landing gear's weight increase as a variable. The analysis reveals only small mission performance gains as the aerodynamic improvements are negated by weight penalties. A new workflow for decision-making is presented that allows to estimate if a change in landing gear configuration is beneficial for a small UAV.
The Dry-Low-NOx (DLN) Micromix combustion technology has been developed as low emission combustion principle for industrial gas turbines fueled with hydrogen or syngas. The combustion process is based on the phenomenon of jet-in-crossflow-mixing (JICF). Fuel is injected perpendicular into the air-cross-flow and burned in a multitude of miniaturized, diffusion-like flames. The miniaturization of the flames leads to a significant reduction of NOx emissions due to the very short residence time of reactants in the flame. In the Micromix research approach, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses are validated toward experimental results. The combination of numerical and experimental methods allows an efficient design and optimization of DLN Micromix combustors concerning combustion stability and low NOx emissions. The paper presents a comparison of several numerical combustion models for hydrogen and hydrogen-rich syngas. They differ in the complexity of the underlying reaction mechanism and the associated computational effort. The performance of a hybrid eddy-break-up (EBU) model with a one-step global reaction is compared to a complex chemistry model and a flamelet generated manifolds (FGM) model, both using detailed reaction schemes for hydrogen or syngas combustion. Validation of numerical results is based on exhaust gas compositions available from experimental investigation on DLN Micromix combustors. The conducted evaluation confirms that the applied detailed combustion mechanisms are able to predict the general physics of the DLN-Micromix combustion process accurately. The FGM method proved to be generally suitable to reduce the computational effort while maintaining the accuracy of detailed chemistry.
Wind-induced operational variability is one of the major challenges for structural health monitoring of slender engineering structures like aircraft wings or wind turbine blades. Damage sensitive features often show an even bigger sensitivity to operational variability. In this study a composite cantilever was subjected to multiple mass configurations, velocities and angles of attack in a controlled wind tunnel environment. A small-scale impact damage was introduced to the specimen and the structural response measurements were repeated. The proposed damage detection methodology is based on automated operational modal analysis. A novel baseline preparation procedure is described that reduces the amount of user interaction to the provision of a single consistency threshold. The procedure starts with an indeterminate number of operational modal analysis identifications from a large number of datasets and returns a complete baseline matrix of natural frequencies and damping ratios that is suitable for subsequent anomaly detection. Mahalanobis distance-based anomaly detection is then applied to successfully detect the damage under varying severities of operational variability and with various degrees of knowledge about the present operational conditions. The damage detection capabilities of the proposed methodology were found to be excellent under varying velocities and angles of attack. Damage detection was less successful under joint mass and wind variability but could be significantly improved through the provision of the currently encountered operational conditions.