Aeronautical hybrid propulsion for More Electric Aircraft: a case of study

In the last years considerable efforts towards the development of more electric transportation systems have been done. This trend heavily involves also the aerospace industry both civil and military, as demonstrated by numerous research project based on the concept known as More Electric Aircraft (MEA). MEA is based on the utilization of electric power to drive an increasing number of aircraft subsystems; its main goal is the replacement of those systems or actuators powered by hydraulic and pneumatic energy sources with electric drives. Among the main advantages of more electric architectures, it's worth reminding the reduction of the environmental impact and the improvement of the overall performances, with a special attention to the on-board energy management. The latter aspect encompasses all the features of on-board energy provision, storage, distribution and consumption and requires a system level perspective. In the general framework of the More Electric Aircraft concept, this work reports a case of study related to the development of an aeronautical hybrid propulsion system for an Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) able to optimize the performance of the aircraft energy management. A laboratory demonstrator of the proposed hybrid architecture was built and tested.