CHANNELS

Aerospace

Automotive

Automated & Autonomous Vehicles

Battery & Electrification Technology

Defense

Drone TV

Electronics

Manufacturing & Prototyping

Materials

Medical

Motion Control

RF & Microwave Technology

Robotics & Automation

Sensors & IoT

Test & Measurement

Aerospace
Automotive
Automated & Autonomous Vehicles
Battery & Electrification Technology
Defense
Drone TV
Electronics
Manufacturing & Prototyping
Materials
Medical
Motion Control
RF & Microwave Technology
Robotics & Automation
Sensors & IoT
Test & Measurement
Aerospace & Defense
Search Results

Hybrid Aircraft - Able to Recharge its Batteries in Flight - Successfully Tested

Researchers from the UK's University of Cambridge have successfully tested the first aircraft to be powered by a parallel hybrid-electric propulsion system, where an electric motor and gas engine work together to drive the propeller. Test flights consisted of a series of 'hops' along the runway, followed by longer evaluation flights at a height of over 1,500 feet. The demonstrator aircraft uses up to 30% less fuel than a comparable plane with a gasoline-only engine. The aircraft is also able to recharge its batteries in flight, the first time this has been achieved. The demonstrator is based on a commercially-available single-seat aircraft, and its hybrid engine was designed and built by engineers at Cambridge with funding support from Boeing. The aircraft uses a combination of a 4-stroke piston engine and an electric motor/ generator, coupled through the same drive pulley to spin the propeller. During take-off and climb, when maximum power is required, the engine and motor work together to power the plane, but once cruising height is reached, the electric motor can be switched into generator mode to recharge the batteries or used in motor assist mode to minimize fuel consumption.

Topics:
Aerospace Aviation Batteries Electronics & Computers Energy Motion Control Motors & Drives Power Test & Measurement

More From SAE Media Group

    Transcript

    00:00:02 we've had hybrid cars available for some period uh Toyota Prius was the first hybrid vehicle and other um manufacturers the major manufacturers now also have hybrid uh cars combination of petrol and electric where they can achieve performance and fuel economy within the same uh vehicle but for aircraft there are no commercially available hybrid aircraft today the

    00:00:25 reason for that is that the the development research and development of hybrid power plants aircraft uh is a relatively new undertaking so only in the last few years have been people um people have been looking at this and the reason is that the batteries really haven't been good enough they've been too heavy for a given energy capacity to be viable in aircraft with today's

    00:00:48 batteries if you just run a quick backof the envelope calculation if you were to replace all the engines and all the fuel in an airline up with batteries it would fly for just under 10 minutes so we're looking decades away before uh an electric airliner will be a viable possibility but with the Advent of Lithium Polymer batteries lightweight high power density we're at the point

    00:01:14 where their energy density is now viable where you can begin to look at hybrid aircraft and indeed entirely electric aircraft albeit with a reduced range the hybrid demonstrator which we've built is based on a check built airframe which is called called The Sun It's a lightweight motor glider single seater motor glider which fits into the micrite category in the UK now the

    00:01:39 single seat micrite category has recently been deregulated so that we are free to um to innovate to research on power plants so what we've done is we've combined a fourstroke petrol engine of about 7 KW with an electric motor of about 10 KW and made a combined pack AG with a similar power to the standard engine which is provided on that airframe the reason why we'd make a

    00:02:07 hybrid aircraft is because in aircraft the power you need for takeoff and climb is considerably higher than it is when you're up in the cruise cruising along at a steady speed so if we wish to achieve a particular climb rate then we would need a large petrol engine if we have just solely petrol and that does not run as efficiently when we throttle it back for the cruise if we look at the

    00:02:30 Hybrid concept then we can use petrol and Electric in combination to give us a very high Power Burst for takeoff and climbing then once we're up at Cruise height we can reduce the electric power perhaps even down to zero and we can Cruise along where the engine the petrol burning engine is running at its most efficient point so we get very high fuel economy we can also if we need to tap a

    00:02:52 little bit of the extra power back and recharge the batteries so that we're ready to continue climbing or take off it for a second time our hybrid aircraft uh is basically a test bed where we can evaluate the different Technologies at the moment we're continuing to collect flight data and we're using that data to validate the uh the theoretical computer models which we've made of the airframe

    00:03:16 and the batteries and the engine and the motor together so we're looking to see if the whole package behaves as it should do now in the longer term beyond that we can also start evaluating alternative fuels for example because we have a petrol and electric combination together then if either one of those uh engines were to malfunction for example or not perform as expected we have the

    00:03:41 backup of the other power source so if we're looking at um new fuel types and we wish to understand how they work perhaps at altitude or different temperature ranges then we've got the additional backup of the electric drive so basically it gives us a very useful test bed to evaluate different Technologies