Electric Airplanes and Drones by Kevin Desmond

Author:Kevin Desmond
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

2017: Visitors to AERO at Friedrichshafen saw the Siemens-engined Extra and E-Fusion fly past in silence (Messe Friedrichshafen/AERO Friedrichshafen).

From left, Tine Tomažič, Frank Anton of Siemens and Ivo Boscarol, key players in Pipistrel’s development (Pipistrel).

From June 5 to 9, 2017, the AIAA Transformational Electric Flight Workshop & Expo was held at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel. It brought together speakers and attendees from industry, government and academia worldwide. One of its features was the 4th Joint Transformative Vertical Flight Workshop. Among the speakers was Paul Eremenko, CTO of Airbus, who described the CityAirbus that the French original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is currently researching. It will be a four-seat, all-electric vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft, and the “flagship” of the Airbus urban mobility division. The first flight of CityAirbus is expected to occur in 2018. It is currently being developed at the E-Aircraft Systems House, which is capable of testing power systems in excess of 20 megawatts. Eremenko said the ultimate goal, though, is the development of a completely new, single-aisle aircraft, powered by hybrid electric propulsion technology. In pursuit of that goal, Airbus continues to work on the E-Fan X. “For the first time since the jet age of passenger aviation … we’re really thinking about opening up the design trade space, beyond the tube and wings configurations,” Eremenko said. “Hybrid propulsion enables us to think about distributed thrusters, creating a blown wing effect that could allow shrinking the wing area, or using differential thrust to control the yaw of the aircraft, reducing the vertical tail surface, or boundary level ingestion to re-ingest the wake at the tail of the airplane, cutting the overall drag by up to 10%.”13

One way ahead for Airbus’s E-Fan X single-aisle airliner project was to take the BAe 146/Avro RJ regional jet airliner, nicknamed the Whisperjet for its quiet operation, and modify its 2-megawatt-class turbogenerator and batteries powering electric propulsors replacing one or two of the aircraft’s four turbofans. But as the system matures and is demonstrated to be safe and, presumably, as battery costs come down, provisions will be made toward replacing a second turbine with another 2MW motor. If sanctioned, the aircraft would fly by 2020.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.