Urban Air Mobility: Energy Management Progress and Challenges

Dear Colleagues,

During the last few years, the recourse to electrification in aeronautical propulsive systems, together with the diffusion of new concepts of air mobility, including urban air mobility, i.e., the use of small, highly automated aircraft to carry passengers or cargo at lower altitudes in urban and suburban areas, has increased. UAM largely makes use of vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft (VTOL) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

The implementation of energy storage systems and renewable energies for UAM could be essential for guaranteeing flight durations under specific weight/volume constraints. When multiple power supply sources are installed in a VTOL or a UAV, the variability of the operation conditions means the energy management and the power distribution strategies should match the characteristics of each power supply source. To address these issues, some special design considerations should be adopted to combine different power sources (battery, fuel cell, supercapacitor, flywheel, etc.) and advanced energy management strategies (EMSs) in the most efficient and effective way. Depending on the specific load power profile, different EMSs can be considered to increase the overall performance of the system. The optimization design of hybrid systems with smart EMSs shall increase not only the autonomy of the aerial vehicle, but also the service life for each power source installed onboard. These EMSs will be realized through the power electronics associated with different power sources. Moreover, to optimally control the energy flow among the different sources even under faulty conditions (for example, the loss of one power source), some fault-tolerant control strategies can be considered to ensure the smooth operation of UAVs and VTOL vehicles.

In this context, this Special Issue aims to be an open platform to share knowledge about energy management progress and challenges in VTOL aircraft and UAVs. It particularly seeks original contributions regarding ideas, recent developments, or matured studies addressing both theoretical and experimental aspects.

Dr. Zhibin Zhou
Dr. Teresa Donateo
Prof. Dr. Mohamed Benbouzid
Guest Editors

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• unmanned aerial vehicle
• drone
• battery
• fuel cell
• hybrid energy storage
• multi-source power systems
• energy management strategy
• power electronics