Optimizing the Design and Subsystems Architecture of an Advanced Air Mobility Aircraft

What is it about?

An Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) aircraft concept sized using an in-house sizing framework is optimized using a genetic algorithm. Different propulsion and subsystem architectures are evaluated, alongside other aircraft design variables such as wing loading and aspect ratio. All-electric (AE), Hybrid-electric (HE), and Turbo-electric (TE) architectures are considered, and different possible options for the Wing Ice Protection System (WIPS), Environmental Control System (ECS), and Battery Thermal Management System (BTMS) are modeled for the optimizer to select. The optimizer then varies these variables for different ranges and speeds and different objective functions.

Featured Image

Photo by Bruce Warrington on Unsplash

Photo by Bruce Warrington on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Urban Air Mobility and Advanced Air Mobility aircraft have recently become more popular. Most of these designs use an electric or hybrid-electric propulsion system, which opens up a lot of opportunities for newer subsystem architectures. We aim to study how different mission objectives such as cruise range and cruise speed can change which subsystems and propulsion architectures are considered to be optimal. We have found that different propulsion architectures will have a strong bias towards different subsystem architectures and that increasing the cruise range and cruise speed can also change the preferred architecture.