METHODOLOGY FOR THE CONCEPTUAL DESIGN OF CONVENTIONAL AND BOX-WING AIRCRAFT WITH HYBRID-ELECTRIC PROPULSION

Among the possible ways to move the aviation sector towards carbon-neutrality, the adoption of hybrid-electric propulsion and disruptive airframe architectures can provide a significant contribution, cutting CO2 emissions and paving the way for a more sustainable aviation. Given the novelty of the technologies involved, new aircraft design tools and procedures are needed. This paper presents a framework for the conceptual design of hybrid-electric aircraft with conventional and PrandtlPlane airframe architectures. The methodology implemented in the framework is based on the interaction between two in-house developed tools: THEA-CODE and AEROSTATE. THEA-CODE performs the aircraft conceptual design, carrying out the estimation of the weight of the structural components, hybrid-electric systems and the computation of the aerodynamic and mission performance. AEROSTATE enhances aircraft aerodynamic efficiency by using a constrained optimization procedure. The two tools are concatenated in an iterative cycle, to converge to the best feasible aircraft design. Finally, an example of application of the framework is presented for a regional hybrid-electric aircraft with a box-wing architecture. The activities described in the paper are part of the Italian research project "PROSIB", whose goal is to develop enabling technologies for hybrid-electric regional aircraft.