Electric Aircraft

A special issue of Aerospace (ISSN 2226-4310).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2018) | Viewed by 7112

Special Issue Editor

Senior Lecturer in Aerospace Engineering, Division of Engineering Science, School of Engineering and Material Science, Queen Mary, University of London, 327 Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK
Interests: dynamics and control of electric aircraft; aerospace vehicles; robotics; UAVs & energy systems

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Ever-increasing energy demand and rising fuel prices have motivated aircraft industries to develop alternative power sources for future aircraft. In the aviation sector, the requirements of flight reliability, low noise-emission levels, reduction in the dependence on fossil fuels, requirements of lower costs and lower weight, and longer life cycles, increase the complexity of the overall system and lead manufacturers to introduce major breakthroughs and innovations. Hybrid electric propulsion and all-electric propulsion for future aircraft are currently popular fields in the aircraft industry and are forming the basis for future commercial aircraft designs. Hybrid electric propulsion systems are composed of a networked set of gas turbines and batteries, while in all electric propulsion systems batteries are the only source of propulsive power on aircraft. Current battery technologies pose the most serious limitations to the development of all-electric and more-electric aircraft. However, rapid strides are being made in the evolution of battery technology and, for this reason, most aircraft industries are planning to introduce either more-electric or all-electric powered aircraft within the next two decades. Electric aircraft will pose new problems related to the general aircraft architecture, geometry and shape, battery, motor, and propulsion system design, aerodynamics, drag reduction and boundary layer control, aircraft performance, stability and control, the design of flight controllers, optimum structural design, and a host of other issues. In this Special Issue, we hope bring together a number of current aspects of electric aircraft that are being extensively researched within the aerospace community.

Dr. Ranjan Vepa
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Aerospace is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Electric Aircraft
  • Electric Propulsion
  • Metal Air Batteries
  • Battery Simulation
  • State of Charge Estimation
  • High Temperature Superconductors (HTS)
  • HTS Electric Machines
  • All Electric Propulsion
  • Hybrid Electric Propulsion
  • Distributed Electric Propulsion
  • Dynamics and Control
  • Fault Tolerant Control

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

14 pages, 1140 KiB  
Article
Modeling and Dynamics of HTS Motors for Aircraft Electric Propulsion
by Ranjan Vepa
Aerospace 2018, 5(1), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace5010021 - 22 Feb 2018
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 6089
Abstract
In this paper, the methodology of how a dynamic model of a conventional permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) may be modified to model the dynamics of a high-temperature superconductor (HTS) machine is illustrated. Simulations of a typical PMSM operating under room temperature conditions [...] Read more.
In this paper, the methodology of how a dynamic model of a conventional permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) may be modified to model the dynamics of a high-temperature superconductor (HTS) machine is illustrated. Simulations of a typical PMSM operating under room temperature conditions and also at temperatures when the stator windings are superconducting are compared. Given a matching set of values for the stator resistance at superconducting temperature and flux-trapped rotor field, it is shown that the performance of the HTS PMSM is quite comparable to a PMSM under normal room temperature operating conditions, provided the parameters of the motor are appropriately related to each other. From these simulations, a number of strategies for operating the motor so as to get the propeller to deliver thrust with maximum propulsive efficiency are discussed. It is concluded that the motor–propeller system must be operated so as to deliver thrust at the maximum propulsive efficiency point. This, in turn, necessitates continuous tracking of the maximum propulsive efficiency point and consequently it is essential that the controller requires a maximum propulsive efficiency point tracking (MPEPT) outer loop. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Electric Aircraft)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop