The progressively more severe noise and pollution requirements in aviation has pushed aircraft companies to amplify the research of electric aircraft. In this scenario, the development of new technologies is crucial and liquid hydrogen, together with fuel cells, represents a valid alternative for the production of power. The main purpose of this work is to develop a novel methodology for the sizing of cryogenic tanks used in aircraft, in order to obtain preliminary aircraft design solutions that utilize liquid hydrogen storage systems in hybrid electric powertrains. The methodology must deal with innovative powertrain design, as no general methods are available in literature yet. Therefore, a MATLAB® tool, called tankSizing, was implemented. It is composed by several functions that aim to apply a geometrical, mechanical, and thermal design to provide the best performing configuration for the size of the tank. To guarantee realistic solutions a validation exercise was carried out using the available data about the Ion Tiger UAV. After that, the new tool was integrated into FlyCell and Titan codes developed at “Politecnico di Milano” in recent years. Achieving the integration, a retrofit of the Dornier 228 aircraft was executed, followed by the preliminary aircraft design of a liquid hydrogen fuel cell based aircraft using the DO-223 as a base model. A comparison between the studied airplanes that utilize cryogenic (20 K) tanks at ambient pressure versus pressurized (700 bar) tanks at ambient temperature to storage the fuel during the mission is presented. Three technological horizons were assumed for the analysis: 2020, 2035 and 2050. The results show that, under the considered hypotheses (which include the standard airplane manufacturing and materials), the 2020 technology is not developed enough to be applied for transport aircraft. On the contrary, much better results are obtained when considering reasonable technological advancement by 2035 and 2050. The results obtained show that the future aircraft’s gross weight decreases by about 15% for the 2035 case and 20% for the 2050 case. In addition, a more promising obtained benefit is that fuel mass used during the mission is reduces by about 87%. Finally, a complete preliminary design was applied to the U19 aircraft studied in the Clean Sky UNIFIER19 project, obtaining promising results regarding the use of liquid hydrogen in aviation in the near future.
Le più stringenti richieste riguardanti il rumore e l’inquinamento nel settore dell'aviazione hanno spinto le aziende aeronautiche ad amplificare la ricerca sugli aeromobili elettrici. In questo scenario, dove lo sviluppo di nuove tecnologie è fondamentale, dove l'idrogeno liquido insieme alle celle a combustibile, rappresentano una valida alternativa per la produzione di energia. Lo scopo principale di questo elaborato è sviluppare una nuova metodologia per il dimensionamento dei serbatoi criogenici utilizzati negli aeromobili, al fine di ottenere soluzioni preliminari di progettazione di velivoli che utilizzino sistemi di stoccaggio dell'idrogeno liquido in propulsori elettrici ibridi. La metodologia si deve occupare del design innovativo del gruppo propulsore, poiché non sono ancora disponibili metodi generali in letteratura. Pertanto, è stato implementato un codice in ambiente MATLAB®, denominato tankSizing. Questo è composto da diverse funzioni che mirano ad applicare un design geometrico, meccanico e termico del sistema per fornire la configurazione più performante per il dimensionamento del serbatoio. Per garantire soluzioni realistiche è stato effettuato un esercizio di validazione utilizzando i dati disponibili sull’Ion Tiger UAV. Successivamente, il nuovo codice è stato integrato nei codici FlyCell e Titan sviluppati negli ultimi anni al “Politecnico di Milano”. Dopo aver realizzato l'integrazione è stato eseguito il retrofit del Dornier 228, seguito dalla progettazione preliminare di un velivolo a base di celle a combustibile a idrogeno liquido utilizzando il DO-223 come modello base. Inoltre, viene presentato un confronto tra gli aeromobili studiati che usano serbatoi criogenici (20 K) a pressione ambiente e serbatoi pressurizzati (700 bar) a temperatura ambiente per immagazzinare il combustibile utilizzato durante la missione. Per l’analisi sono stati ipotizzati tre orizzonti tecnologici: 2020, 2035 e 2050. I risultati mostrano che, sotto le ipotesi considerate (che includono la manifattura dell’aereo e i materiali usati), la tecnologia 2020 non è sufficientemente sviluppata per essere applicata agli aerei da trasporto. Al contrario, si ottengono risultati molto migliori se si considera un ragionevole progresso tecnologico entro il 2035 e il 2050. I risultati ottenuti mostrano che il peso lordo del futuro velivolo diminuisce di circa il 15% per il caso 2035 e del 20% per il caso 2050. Inoltre, un vantaggio più promettente ottenuto è che la quantità di carburante usato durante la missione si è ridotta di circa l'87%. Infine, è stata realizzata una completa progettazione preliminare del velivolo U19 studiato nel progetto Clean Sky UNIFIER19, ottenendo risultati promettenti per quanto riguarda l'utilizzo dell'idrogeno liquido nell'aviazione nel prossimo futuro.
Liquid hydrogen aircraft propulsion
Chacha Guevara, Luis Miguel
2019/2020
Abstract
The progressively more severe noise and pollution requirements in aviation has pushed aircraft companies to amplify the research of electric aircraft. In this scenario, the development of new technologies is crucial and liquid hydrogen, together with fuel cells, represents a valid alternative for the production of power. The main purpose of this work is to develop a novel methodology for the sizing of cryogenic tanks used in aircraft, in order to obtain preliminary aircraft design solutions that utilize liquid hydrogen storage systems in hybrid electric powertrains. The methodology must deal with innovative powertrain design, as no general methods are available in literature yet. Therefore, a MATLAB® tool, called tankSizing, was implemented. It is composed by several functions that aim to apply a geometrical, mechanical, and thermal design to provide the best performing configuration for the size of the tank. To guarantee realistic solutions a validation exercise was carried out using the available data about the Ion Tiger UAV. After that, the new tool was integrated into FlyCell and Titan codes developed at “Politecnico di Milano” in recent years. Achieving the integration, a retrofit of the Dornier 228 aircraft was executed, followed by the preliminary aircraft design of a liquid hydrogen fuel cell based aircraft using the DO-223 as a base model. A comparison between the studied airplanes that utilize cryogenic (20 K) tanks at ambient pressure versus pressurized (700 bar) tanks at ambient temperature to storage the fuel during the mission is presented. Three technological horizons were assumed for the analysis: 2020, 2035 and 2050. The results show that, under the considered hypotheses (which include the standard airplane manufacturing and materials), the 2020 technology is not developed enough to be applied for transport aircraft. On the contrary, much better results are obtained when considering reasonable technological advancement by 2035 and 2050. The results obtained show that the future aircraft’s gross weight decreases by about 15% for the 2035 case and 20% for the 2050 case. In addition, a more promising obtained benefit is that fuel mass used during the mission is reduces by about 87%. Finally, a complete preliminary design was applied to the U19 aircraft studied in the Clean Sky UNIFIER19 project, obtaining promising results regarding the use of liquid hydrogen in aviation in the near future.| File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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https://hdl.handle.net/10589/170430