Design, modelling and measurement of hybrid powerplant for unmanned aerial systems (UAS)

Abstract

Hybrid powerplants combining Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) and Electric Motor (EM) prime movers have been extensively developed for land and marine based transport systems. The use of such powerplants in airborne applications has been historically impractical due to energy and power density constraints. Improvements in battery and electric motor technology make aircraft hybrid powerplants feasible. This paper presents a technique for determining the feasibility and mechanical effectiveness of powerplant hybridisation. In this work a prototype Aircraft Hybrid Powerplant (AHP) was designed, constructed and tested. It is shown that an additional 35% power can be supplied from the hybrid system with an overall weight penalty of 5%, for a given UAS. A flight dynamic model was developed using the AeroSim™ Blockset in MATLAB® Simulink®. The results have shown that climb rates can be improved by 56% when using the hybrid powerplant concept, with a standard propeller design.