Development of a tool to analyse helicopter performance incorporating novel systems

The aerospace industry has always been looking forward new developments with the aim to create more environmental friendly aircraft, as well as to improve their performance. Over the last few years, a prominent research topic to achieve these challenging goals has been focussed on the incorporation of more electric Secondary Power Systems (SPS), this concept is known as More Electric Aircraft (MEA) or All Electric Aircraft (AEA) when the internal combustion engine is also replaced. Among others, Airbus is using Electro-hydrostatic Actuators, (EHAs) to combine hydraulic and electric power in A320 and A340 for flight tests since 1993. The company TTTECH applied the same concept by working on the development of an electrical steering system for an aircraft nose landing gear, and power source rationalization and electrical power flexibility in aircraft. Some of the advantages stated when the MEA concept is applied are: reduction in aircraft weight and performance penalties related to conventional SPS. Although the More/All electric aircraft concept provided satisfactory results for fixed-wing aircraft, research for rotary-wing aircraft is less common. This encourages the assessment of fuel consumption and performance penalties due to conventional and more electric SPS at conceptual level, which could achieve similar outcomes, while finding the best configuration possible. This project takes into account the previous research focused on fixed-wing aircraft and studies on new technologies for SPS within Cranfield University, this includes electrical Ice Protection System (IPS), Environmental Control System (ECS) and Actuation System (AS). Additionally, Fuel System (FS) and Electrical System (ES) capabilities were added, developing a generic tool able to predict the total power requirements depending on the flight conditions. This generic tool was then integrated with a performance model, where overall fuel consumption is calculated for a flight mission, giving continuity and improvement to the work already done. Secondary systems configuration and operating characteristics for a representative light single-engine rotary-wing aircraft were tailored, and the systems behaviour is presented. Finally, fuel consumption was calculated for a baseline mission profile, and compared to the fuel consumption when the systems are not included. The baseline mission set the initial flight conditions from which a parametric study was carried out; by varying these conditions the parametric study determined total fuel requirements for the analysed flight segments. An increment of up to %1.9 in the fuel consumption was found by integrating the proposed systems to the performance model, showing the impact produced by the systems, and the importance of studying different technologies to minimise it.