Electric propulsion aircraft offer new operational paradigms that will open aviation markets that cannot be serviced by conventional vehicles, while simultaneously addressing the environmental impacts…

This is a $1,879,830.81 Cooperative Agreement awarded by the Shared Services Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to Georgia Tech Research Corporation, doing business as the Office of Sponsored Programs. The contract, which runs through August 31, 2022, focuses on research and development related to thermal management for electric propulsion aircraft. The work will involve developing tools for thermo-mechanical design of advanced thermal management subsystems, preliminary system-level design tools for the thermal subsystem, and a coupled aero-thermo-mechanical optimization tool. All tools developed under this contract will be released open source to maximize technology transfer to NASA and the aerospace industry. This contract did not carry any set-aside designation.

Electric propulsion aircraft offer new operational paradigms that will open aviation markets that cannot be serviced by conventional vehicles, while simultaneously addressing the environmental impacts of aviation. However, these aircraft present new challenges, since power system and thermal management design must be considered at an early phase. Electric propulsion systems offer superior thermal efficiency compared to conventional propulsion, but do not offer a built-in mechanism to reject excess heat in to the atmosphere, potentially leading to reduced subsystem performance or failure due to overheating. This heat rejection problem is further amplified by severe restrictions on the operating temperature of electric propulsion components. Thermal management is also coupled to the operational and mission aspects of the vehicle, necessitating a system-level study of these impacts. Due to the weightcritical nature of distributed electric vehicles, particularly battery-electric concepts, adding external heat exchangers is suboptimal due to the weight and drag impact. Designing multifunctional components, like for example, a load-carrying heat exchanger, has the potential to eliminate weight penalties. To address these issues, we will focus our research and development on three separate thrust areas: (1) thermo-mechanical design of advanced load-carrying thermal management subsystem components, (2) preliminary systemlevel design tools for the thermal subsystem of distributed electric propulsion aircraft, and (3) a coupled aero-thermo-mechanical optimization tool that couples aerodynamic, thermal, and mechanical performance. The first thrust area will be addressed through the development of a high-resolution topology optimization tool for the design of novel thermal-elastic structures within tacs, an open source finite-element design code. This topology optimization tool will enable a broad exploration of electric propulsion structures that serve a dual role of carrying mechanical loads, while also serving a heat-transfer function. A new preliminary thermal and powersystem performance assessment and design tool will be integrated within the mission analysis capabilities within openmdao to address the second thrust area. The third thrust area will be addressed by developing a new thermo-mechanical tool coupling a CFD code and tacs. These tools will be broadly applicable across a range of hybrid-electric or battery-electric vehicles. All tools developed under this contract will be released open source to maximize technology transfer to NASA and to the aerospace industry at large.