Thermal Management System Modeling and Architectures for Conceptual Design of Electrified Aircraft
Abstract
Electrified aircraft designs require thermal management systems (TMS) to maintain all electric propulsive components at safe operating temperatures. Modeling the TMS for inclusion in the study of such aircraft from the early stages of conceptual design is required to properly evaluate the feasibility and performance of such aircraft configurations. This work presents a tool-agnostic, multifidelity TMS modeling methodology that is capable of representing TMS architectures in a unified way. The methodology is implemented in an existing MDAO framework, which is built on top of NASA’s Aviary aircraft design code and OpenMDAO. The results are validated against literature for several aircraft size classes. The impacts of TMS architectures and subsystem performance parameters on aircraft weight, drag, and power consumption are presented. Trade studies show that ducting losses, heat acquisition effectiveness, plumbing layout, and electrification factor are major influences of system level performance. Neglecting these effects during early design stages can create additional challenges to realizing the benefits of electrification at later design stages.
Maxfield Arnson
PhD Student and Graduate Research Assistant
Maxfield Arnson is a graduate student research assistant in the IDEAS Lab at the University of Michigan.
