Browsing by Author "Seresinhe, Ravinka"

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    Electrical load-sizing methodology to aid conceptual and preliminary design of large commercial aircraft
    (Sage, 2014-05-13) Seresinhe, Ravinka; Lawson, Craig;
    The importance of the more electric aircraft has been highlighted in many publications, projects and industrial presentations. By definition, the more electric aircraft concept achieves the majority of the required system functionality by using electrically powered sub-systems and components. This manifests itself in much higher electrical power demands on-board aircraft, compared to conventional architectures. This presents many challenges in the design process. To alleviate the risk and choose the optimum architectures for the systems on the aircraft, it is essential to incorporate the characteristics and possible configurations of the electrical network in the conceptual and preliminary design stages. Hence the current practice of performing an electrical load analysis at the detailed design stage is not adequate. To address this gap, this paper presents a viable and robust methodology to define requirements, size components and systems and calculates the electric power requirements at the preliminary design stages. The methodology uses the conventional aircraft, systems and components as the baseline and uses mathematical techniques and logical sequences of component operation, developed through the research, to size electrical load profiles for conventional aircraft. It then adapts this result to the more electric aircraft concept by adding key components that would account for the difference between a conventional system and a more electric system. The methodology presented here makes the design process more robust and aids the choice of the optimum design for the aircraft.
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    Improving the operating efficiency of the more electric aircraft concept through optimised flight procedures
    (Springer, 2018-09-22) Seresinhe, Ravinka; Lawson, Craig;; Madani, Irfan
    The increasing awareness of the environmental risks and costs due to the growing demand in aviation has prompted both academic and industrial research into short-term and long-term technologies which could help address the challenges. Among these, the more electric aircraft has been identified as a key design concept which would make aircraft more environmentally friendly and cost effective in the long run. Moreover, the notion of free-flight and optimised trajectories has been identified as a key operational concept which would help curb the environmental effects of aircraft as well as reduce overall costs. The research in this paper presents a methodology in which these two concepts can be coupled to study the benefits of more electric aircraft (MEA) flying optimised trajectories. A wide range of issues from aircraft performance, engine performance, airframe systems operation, power off-take penalties, emission modelling, optimisation algorithms and optimisation frameworks has been addressed throughout the study. The case study is based on a popular short haul flight between London Heathrow and Amsterdam Schiphol. The culmination of the study establishes the advantage of the MEA over conventional aircraft and also addresses the enhanced approach to the classical aircraft trajectory optimisation problem. The study shows that the operation procedures to achieve a minimum fuel burn are significantly different for a conventional aircraft and MEA. Trajectory optimisation reduced the fuel burn by 17.4% for the conventional aircraft and 12.2% for the more electric compared to the respective baseline cases. Within the constraints of the study, the minimum fuel burn trajectory for the MEA consumed 9.9% less fuel than the minimum fuel burn trajectory for the conventional aircraft.