Scalable Graph Theory Approach for Electric Aircraft Power System Optimization

This work proposes an approach to optimize the power system configuration in electric aircrafts. The proposed approach, intended to be used as an early stage design tool, includes the utilization of mathematical methods such as graph theory to identify optimal solutions with regard to the number of components as well as interconnection and placement within the power system. Subsystems and components are represented as nodes, and properties such as power and energy density, efficiency, and capacity are assigned to them. Aircraft power system optimization is a non-linear multi-objective problem and stochastic techniques may be required for its solution. Such techniques often require a large number of possible candidate power system configurations, which would be facilitated by the proposed network graph approach. Objectives include total system mass, efficiency, reliability, and a composite cost function, which is a weighted combination of these, can be formulated.