Dr Guy Gratton CEng, Associate Professor of Aviation and the Environment, School of Aerospace, Transport Systems and Manufacturing hosted a webinar discussing the topic "Electric flight" on Thursday 3 November 2022.

In this webinar Guy shared the reasons to try and achieve electric flight, the main projects worldwide currently in the space, particularly focussing on the British EnabEl project he is leading. Guy described the challenges that confront all of these projects, and showed the progress, and the problems, met by EnabEl during test flying of their single seat Sherwood eKub aeroplane. He concluded by showing the various directions technology could take in the future, and both the promises and challenges ahead.

Hear more from the keynote speaker
If you are interested in more information from Guy Gratton, please see his research in Cranfield’s repository CERES.

Here are just a few examples of academic articles you can read in your ALO databases on the topic of electric flight:

In AIAA Journals and Meeting Papers

Duffy, M., E., A., Hupp, R., Perdomo, E., & Wakayama, S. (2022). Propulsion Scaling Methods in the Era of Electric Flight. 2018 AIAA/IEEE Electric Aircraft Technologies Symposium. 

E., G., & J., P. (2022). Hybrid-Electric Breguet Range Equation: Development & Validation Against a Hybrid-Electric Aircraft Simulation. AIAA Propulsion and Energy 2020 Forum.
 
K., N., L., C., Jones, F., Yasky, R., Woodham, K., Fell, J., … Samuel, A. (2022). Overcoming the Adoption Barrier to Electric Flight. 54th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting. 

Philip, J. (2022). Principles of High-efficiency Electric Flight. 52nd AIAA/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference. 

Sachs, G., Grüter, B., & Hong, H. (2022). Flight Performance Advantages of Electric Aircraft. AIAA SCITECH 2022 Forum. 

Verberne, J., M., S., M., C., Y., C., & N., D. (2022). Development of a Simulation Environment to Track Key Metrics to Support Trajectory Energy Management of Electric Aircraft.
AIAA AVIATION 2022 Forum. 

In Emerald 

Pinto Leite, J.P.S. and Voskuijl, M. (2020). Optimal energy management for hybrid-electric aircraft. Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, 92(6), 851-861.

In IEEE

T. Modeer, N. Pallo, T. Foulkes, C. B. Barth and R. C. N. Pilawa-Podgurski. (2020). Design of a GaN-Based Interleaved Nine-Level Flying Capacitor Multilevel Inverter for Electric Aircraft Applications. IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, 35(11), 12153-12165.

T. Bærheim, J. J. Lamb, J. K. Nøland and O. S. Burheim. (2022). Potential and Limitations of Battery-Powered All-Electric Regional Flights–A Norwegian Case Study. IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification.

G. Cinar, A. A. Markov, J. C. Gladin, E. Garcia, D. N. Mavris and S. S. Patnaik. (2020). Feasibility Assessments of a Hybrid Turboelectric Medium Altitude Long Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. 2020 AIAA/IEEE Electric Aircraft Technologies Symposium (EATS), 1-17.

In Sage

Miao Z, Wei C, Gao Z, Wang X. (2018). Active coupling suppression and real-time control system design and implementation for three-axis electronic flight motion simulator. Transactions of the Institute of Measurement and Control. 40(4), 1352-1361.

Bacchini A, Cestino E. (2020). Key aspects of electric vertical take-off and landing conceptual design. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part G: Journal of Aerospace Engineering. 234(3), 774-787.

Greenwood E, Brentner KS, Rau RF, Ted Gan ZF. (2022). Challenges and opportunities for low noise electric aircraft. International Journal of Aeroacoustics. 21(5-7), 315-381. 

Open Access articles in ScienceDirect from Elsevier

Although Elsevier do not generally permit alumni access to ScienceDirect material, don’t forget there are many articles available via open access (the author has paid to allow their article to be publicly available without subscription).

Here are some examples of open access articles in this subject area with direct links to the full text:

Mihaela Mitici, Madalena Pereira, Fabrizio Oliviero. (2022). Electric flight scheduling with battery-charging and battery-swapping opportunities. EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics.  11,100074
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejtl.2022.100074

Pia Hoenicke, Debjani Ghosh, Adel Muhandes, Sumantra Bhattacharya, Christiane Bauer, Josef Kallo, Caroline Willich. (2021). Power management control and delivery module for a hybrid electric aircraft using fuel cell and battery. Energy Conversion and Management. 244, 114445.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2021.114445

Alexander Barke, Christian Thies, Sofia Pinheiro Melo, Felipe Cerdas, Christoph Herrmann, Thomas S. Spengler. (2022). Comparison of conventional and electric passenger aircraft for short-haul flights – A life cycle sustainability assessment. Procedia CIRP, 105, 464-469.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procir.2022.02.077

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