Technical and environmental assessment of all-electric 180-passenger commercial aircraft

Aviation emissions contribute to climate change, and all-electric aircraft offer an opportunity for zero in-flight emissions. Over the past decade, more than 50 all-electric conceptual, experimental, and commercial aircraft have been researched, with a particular focus on light aircraft. These designs are reviewed, along with progress in battery technology. An all-electric aircraft design and optimization program, TASOPTe, has been developed from an existing version for conventionally-powered aircraft, TASOPT. Both programs are largely based on first-principles, enabling the design of aircraft with unusually short design ranges. A series of optimized 180-passenger aircraft based on the Airbus A320neo configuration are designed and evaluated at 200-1600 nmi design ranges with 2-10 propulsors and 400-2000 Wh/kg batteries. The performance of these all-electric aircraft is compared to advanced conventionally-powered aircraft optimized for the same design ranges.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Gnadt, Albert Reuben.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Steven R. H. Barrett.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122501

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/122501