Federal Aviation Administration Electric Aircraft Energy Management System

Objective: The introduction of electric and hybrid-electric aircraft poses a range of challenges to regulators; one such challenge is the estimation of remaining energy available to a battery pack, and translating this to easy-to-use metrics to provide the pilot. To ensure public acceptance, these vehicles need to demonstrate an equivalent level of safety consistent with existing regulations. This is further complicated by the use of different modes of flight (forward flight, vertical flight).

This objective required an understanding of the major operational differences between conventional and electric aircraft, and how these differences impact the trajectories a vehicle can fly. For instance, there is no simple analog to fuel gauges for measuring the extractable energy available on-board electric aircraft, as energy related metrics can vary with a range of variables, such as component temperatures, battery health, and environmental conditions. In turn, this makes the estimation of remaining range and endurance much more complex than conventional aircraft, with manufacturers relying on proprietary systems and metrics. 

Contribution: Working closely with the FAA, I developed a simulation environment, allowing the simulation of various energy metrics across a range of commercially available electric aircraft, and modeled hybrid aircraft – including Short and/or Vertical Take-Off and Landing (S/VTOL).

I developed a modular electric aircraft powertrain, allowing the simulation of a user-designated architecture of commercially available components (battery packs, inverters, and motors), utilizing a combination of physics-based and surrogate modeling to simulate scalable electric powertrain architectures. User-configured mission parameters and team-developed vehicle dynamics models provided inputs to the powertrain model, calculating various electrical and energy metrics to then be fed back to the dynamics model, discerning the impact on potential aircraft trajectories. This allowed a pilot to easily assess the effects of changing energy levels on potential landing sites, and power/temperature restrictions for aircraft operation.

In aid of this, a relationship was developed with an electric aircraft manufacturer, who provided a range of proprietary flight test data for a commercially available vehicle. I analyzed data this to determine trends and key variables relating to energy metrics, and subsequently develop surrogate models of a real aircraft. In addition to presenting the environment and subsequent results to the FAA and industry stakeholders, the work was the basis of two AIAA publications (first author and co-author).

Skills:

• Physics-based and surrogate modeling of real-world electrical and aerospace phenomena

•  Electric and hybrid-electric aircraft powertrain modeling, including electromechanical components such as batteries, motors, and inverters.

• Collaboration with governmental agencies, commercial aircraft manufacturers, and academic partners

• Software development and integration

• Academic publication and presentation

Takeaways: Working with a wider array of stakeholders – including a governmental regulatory agency – gave me insight into a different paradigm: providing research findings to inform actionable regulation across a nascent yet rapidly growing field.

Providing a specific niche -- electrical and software engineering -- in the aerospace field furthered my interdisciplinary project experience. This required me to conduct an in-depth academic literature review and convey this to academic colleagues and industry sponsors from a different technical background.