I-Corps: High frequency propulsors for hybrid-electric airplanes

I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是使电动和混合动力飞机得到广泛采用，有助于减少全球航空业日益增长的燃料需求和碳影响。研究表明，采用电力推进的商用运输飞机可以大大减少任务燃料消耗，因此，最近许多商业努力已经开始开发更高效的混合动力飞机。该项目所追求的高比功率电机和驱动器可以显著改变重量与效率的系统级交易，并提高这些车辆的技术和商业可行性。这些技术有可能帮助航空航天工业实现为下一代商用运输机设定的雄心勃勃的目标，并确保美国在该行业的领导地位。I-Corps项目的重点是确定一种新型高频、高功率重量比电机的商业潜力，用于电动和混合动力飞机等对重量敏感的应用。基于宽带隙电力电子器件的功率变换器用于驱动机器的工作频率到大约十倍的电流值，从而大大减少了电动机对重金属的需求。一套计算效率高的多物理场模型用于这种类型的机器，结合耦合的电磁和热效应，已经在先前的nsf资助项目中开发出来。这些模型已嵌入到快速优化方案中，并用于生成具有非常高功率重量比的机器设计，其值已被业界确定为商用飞机广泛采用混合动力推进的阈值。除了减轻重量外，这类机器的电气和机械特性与目前可用的机器大不相同。通过I-Corps项目，该团队将努力了解客户的全套需求，并通过飞行重量和兆瓦级电动机为整架飞机的经济性增加价值。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to enable widespread adoption of electric and hybrid-electric aircraft that can help reduce the growing fuel needs and carbon impact the global aviation industry. With studies showing that commercial transport aircraft with electric propulsion can substantially reduce the mission fuel burn, many commercial efforts have recently been launched to develop more efficient hybrid-electric airplanes. The high specific power electrical machines and drives being pursued in this project can significantly alter system level trades of weight versus efficiency and improve the technical and commercial viability of these vehicles. These technologies have the potential to help the aerospace industry achieve the ambitious goals that have been set for the next three generations of commercial transport aircraft, and ensure US leadership of the industry.This I-Corps project is focused on determining the commercial potential of a new class of high frequency, high power-to-weight ratio electrical machines for weight sensitive applications like electric and hybrid electric aircraft. Power converters based on wide band-gap power electronic devices are used to drive the operating frequency of the machine to about ten times current values, leading to a significant reduction in the need for heavy metals in the electric motor. A set of computationally efficient multi-physics models for this type of machines, incorporating coupled electromagnetic and thermal effects, has been developed within a prior NSF-funded program. These models have been embedded within a rapid optimization scheme and used to generate machine designs with very high power-to-weight ratios, attaining values that have been identified by the industry as a threshold for wide-spread adoption of hybrid electric propulsion in commercial aircraft. In addition to weight reduction, this class of machines have electrical and mechanical features that are quite different from currently available machines. Through the I-Corps program the team will work to understand the full set of customer requirements and the value added by flight-weight, megawatt scale electric motors to the economics of the complete aircraft.