Preliminary sizing methodologies for regional aircraft with liquid hydrogen fuel and SOFC-GT-Battery hybrid-electric powertrains

Preliminary sizing methodologies for regional aircraft with liquid hydrogen fuel and SOFC-GT-Battery hybrid-electric powertrains

Garcia Gonzalez, Pedro (TU Delft Aerospace Engineering)

de Servi, C.M. (mentor)
Mourao, Carlos (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Aerospace Engineering

2022-12-15

Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) systems for aviation applications have been considered for their use as APUs or powertrains, as standalone systems or in combination with gas turbines, and both fueled by reformed Jet-A or by hydrogen. Most existing studies focus on powertrain performance modelling. In this work, traditional tube-and-wing regional aircraft sizing methodologies are modified to account for liquid hydrogen fuel and SOFC-GT-Battery hybrid electric powertrains. Methodologies for powertrain modelling, power sizing, energy sizing, weight calculation and system integration have been derived, implemented, verified, validated when possible, and used to assess several study cases. Considering state-of-the-art metal-supported planar ITSOFC technology installed in a 50-seat regional aircraft as test case, it is concluded that current SOFC system power density is not sufficient to achieve MTOW values similar to conventional kerosene-powered regional aircraft. This work serves as a baseline for the integration of sizing methodologies for SOFC-GT-Battery powertrains into aircraft conceptual-to-preliminary design tools.

Liquid Hydrogen
Fuel Cell Aircraft
SOFC-GT
Solid oxide fuel cell
hybrid electric propulsion
Aircraft Design
Weight Estimation
system integration
Turboprop
Power sizing
Energy sizing

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:65cbbdf3-3627-4829-bd69-208fffc8eba9

Student theses

master thesis

© 2022 Pedro Garcia Gonzalez