NASA N3-X Aircraft DC Power System Design

The increasing demand for air travel and the greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution related to the aviation industry is a major concern that needs to be resolved to achieve net zero emissions. More-electric aircraft (MEA) and all-electric aircraft (AEA) are viable solutions to mitigate this but for their electric power systems (EPSs) which have been targeted as medium-voltage direct current (MVDC) very few power flow analyses exist. In this article, the hybrid NASA N3-X aircraft is redesigned by introducing electrochemical energy units (EEUs) instead of two turboshaft engines to supply the aircraft” EPS. The power flow analysis is carried out for a proposed MVDC EPS architecture for the cruising time compared to that during takeoff to determine the maximum currents flowing different branches of the proposed architecture. The results obtained in this paper are vital since they are needed for designing MVDC aircraft power cables capable of working at both takeoff conditions under almost atmospheric pressure and during cruising time conditions where the maximum current flowing through cables decreases due to limited convection heat transfer due to low pressure.