Abstract

The aviation industry has set ambitious goals to reduce its environmental impact significantly. To achieve these targets, innovative aircraft concepts such as hybrid-electric aircraft must be studied hand in hand with newer systems technologies to analyze the feasibility and improve efficiency. Typically, the impact of aircraft systems is quantified through empirical methods, that do not extend to novel systems technologies. Physics-based methods must be considered to evaluate the impact of these novel technologies. A focus on smaller commuter and regional aircraft is required as these are the categories that will first benefit from hybridization and electrification at current technology levels. Furthermore, in aircraft conceptual design, aircraft systems sizing and analysis need to be integrated into a multidisciplinary analysis and optimization environment to study the aircraft-level trade-offs and performance impact of the systems. This thesis presents a Multidisciplinary Analysis (MDA) framework that integrates systems sizing with other aircraft-level disciplines and can analyze the effects of novel systems architecture at the aircraft level. The framework uses physics-based system sizing methods and can analyze multiple architecture options such as more electric, all-electric, and unconventional systems architectures. System sizing studies of conventional aircraft that are performed using the presented framework are within an error range of 9-13%, which is acceptable for conceptual design. The framework also provides a robust platform for the integration of typically stand-alone analyses such as safety and thermal analysis. The presented MDA framework can also be used to study hybrid-electric aircraft configurations and integrate relevant disciplines such as fuel-system and energy storage assessment. A case study on a hybridized retrofit of a Dornier -228 aircraft is used to demonstrate the capabilities of this framework. Overall, the MDA framework presented in this thesis demonstrates that it is capable of doing an “integrated study” of novel aircraft and systems architecture and facilitates the integration of further disciplinary analysis, thereby improving the effectiveness of conceptual design studies and potentially improving confidence in novel aircraft and system concepts.