Feasibility study of a superconducting helicopter electrical propulsion motor

As a response to the need for lower carbon transmissions for means of transportation, the aerospace industry is looking into more electric aircraft. One concept of such an aircraft is a hybrid helicopter that uses highly efficient diesel engines and electrical propulsion motors. The feasibility of this concept is greatly determined by the feasibility of its main propulsion motor. The very challenging specifications of such a motor means that new technologies have to be used. One of these possible technologies is superconductivity. In this thesis a first technical feasibility study on a direct drive superconducting propulsion motor for a hybrid helicopter concept is performed. Superconductors are special materials that have virtually no electrical resistance when cooled down below a certain critical temperature. This property makes it possible to build high field and low weight coils for electrical machines. A helicopter’s electrical propulsion motor requires a very high torque density. Conventional electrical machines like permanent magnet designs are too heavy for this application. Superconducting motors may achieve the required torque densities, because of their high performance at low weight. In this thesis, first a literature study of superconductivity is presented. After that the machine is designed in three parts: The armature design, the superconducting field windings design and the cryostat design. After that all the results are combined and the complete machine parameters, like the power density, are defined. Finally a conclusion is given on the feasibility of the superconducting propulsion motor and recommendations are given for future work.Electrical Power Processing (EPP)Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc