Grazioso, Giuseppe (2025) Mission-Level Energy Management for Tri-Source Hybrid-Electric Regional Aircraft. [Tesi di dottorato]

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Abstract

Today, the aviation industry faces the unprecedented challenge of reducing its environmental impact and aligning with the sector’s ambition of net-zero CO2 by 2050. Because of their smaller size and shorter routes, regional turboprops have become a practical testbed for integrating cutting-edge technologies, including hybrid-electric propulsion architectures. Integrating thermal engines with electrical power sources—such as energy-storage systems and fuel-cell systems—gives designers new degrees of freedom in how propulsive power is generated and distributed, guiding them towards reduced aviation carbon footprint solutions. The literature on hybrid-electric regional aircraft shows—primarily from a preliminary-design perspective—that integrating two or three power sources within a hybrid-electric architecture can meaningfully lower environmental impact. It also highlights that optimising how those sources are used is crucial to unlocking further emissions reductions; nevertheless, current studies predominantly address dual-source configurations. Hence, this dissertation, entitled Mission-Level Energy Management for Tri-Source Hybrid-Electric Regional Aircraft, shifts the focus from design to an operational perspective. Rather than concentrating on which components should be installed on board, it focuses on when and how these components should be deployed during realistic flight missions to achieve further emissions reductions, thereby posing the following research question: "For a fixed, preliminarily sized hybrid-electric regional aircraft integrating up to three power sources at the same time, how can mission-level energy-management optimisation reduce total energy use and environmental impact under realistic operational constraints?" To address this problem, the candidate develops and integrates three building blocks. First, an explicit mathematical model of a tri-source powerplant enables direct per-source control of the gas turbine, fuel cell and battery while enforcing power-flow consistency and component limits, making source usage transparent and controllable. Second, a Simulation- and Performance-Based Mission Model extends these controls across the full mission profile, adhering to realistic operational constraints. Third, the candidate embeds the mission evaluator in a customised, optimisation workflow using NSGA-II (Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II) to explore feasible, phase-wise throttle schedules that minimise total onboard energy or CO2-equivalent emissions while satisfying all mission constraints. The energy-management optimisation workflow is applied to a tri-source hybrid-electric reference platform developed within the Clean Aviation HERA research project. Baselines are established on representative regional missions; then, by solving two single-objective optimisation problems, the candidate estimates energy-optimal and emissions-optimal energy management strategies that are robust to stochastic and local perturbations. Across fixed-range and range-sweep studies, consistent patterns emerge in when and how sources are best used: the gas turbine is strategically reduced in the most demanding phases when environmental impact is prioritised; the fuel cell provides steady power where it is most effective; while the battery balances transients and acts as a supporting source to minimise the selected cost function. Taken together, the results show that explicit per-source control across the full mission profile is a decisive lever for further reductions in energy use and emissions on a fixed preliminary design, supporting designers in shaping the near future towards sustainable aviation pathways.

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