Integrating Subsystem Sizing into the More Electric Aircraft Conceptual Design Phase

The aircraft industry is transitioning from conventional aircraft subsystem architectures to more electric architectures, as part of the More Electric Initiative. This initiative presents the conceptual designer with several unique challenges that stem from the lack of historical data regarding the More Electric solutions and significant coupling among subsystems that had previously been absent. For More Electric Aircraft, the sizing of the aircraft subsystems must occur in parallel with the aircraft and propulsion system sizing in the conceptual design phase, instead of being deferred to later design stages. In this paper, a framework is presented that captures the requirements associated with a combination of subsystems chosen by the analyst. These requirements are propagated to analysis modules that size the subsystems and feed back relevant information to the aircraft sizing and propulsion system analyses. In the current work, this integrated methodology is demonstrated using four aircraft subsystems: flight control surface actuation, landing gear actuation, the environmental control system, and the wing ice protection system.

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