Towards a more operation-centric approach to aircraft design

Towards a more operation-centric approach to aircraft design

N/A

Fonction: Doctoral student

The thesis is proposed in the framework of the EA²GLE Graduate school related to the electrification of Aircraft and Automobiles and is co-founded by the AMI CMA PEGASE and the Occitanie Region.

The research activities aim to develop design methodologies for low-carbon aviation by addressing the challenges of incorporating operational constraints, failure scenarios, and multi-mission requirements into the optimisation process. The developed methodologies will be applied to the design of architectures of more electric aircraft in the category CS23.

The outcomes of the thesis will enable aircraft manufacturers to design safer, more efficient and more environmentally sustainable aircraft, while reducing design risks, development costs, and time to market.

This thesis will be organized based on several well-defined research axes which will structure the project:

• Axis 1 (Month 1 to 6): this axis will focus on proposing a ConOps for aircraft in the General Aviation segment (which will be the scope of this thesis) and more specifically for larger aircraft specified under CS-23. This will be done thanks to a review of current aircraft in this category, not only including missions but also geographical profiles, and will also include a review of design constraints for propulsive and non-propulsive systems.
• Axis 2 (Month 7 to16): this axis will aim at improving the models in the FAST-OAD-CS23-HE framework which is developed to assess Hybrid Electric aircraft of category CS23. It will include the proposition of models for the sizing of non-propulsive systems on General Aviation aircraft and their impact on the sizing of propulsive systems (which therefore requires higher fidelity modeling on thermal machines). Additional work on the impacts of usage of thermal machines and batteries on their respective lifespan and performances is also expected.
• Axis 3 (Month 17 to 24): this axis will focus on the methodological aspect of deploying multi-mission optimization in an OAD framework. In particular, tradeoffs between different objective functions such as costs or environmental impacts will be investigated. The use of a simplified test case is proposed for this axis.
• Axis 4 (Month 25 to 30): this axis will further develop the work done in the previous months with a specific application to the TBM900 family and will investigate the possibility and viability of electrifying propulsive and non-propulsive functions.
• Month 31 to 36 will be dedicated to the redaction of the manuscript and preparation of the defense.

This work is expected to lead to the publication of at least 1 scientific article in a top-tier journal and at least two international conferences.