Exploration and Sizing of a Large Passenger Aircraft with Distributed Ducted Electric Fans

International audienceIn order to reduce the CO2 emissions, a disruptive concept in aircraft propulsion has to be considered. As studied in the past years hybrid distributed electric propulsion is apromising option. In this work the feasibility of a new concept aircraft, using this technology, has been studied. Two different energy sources have been used: fuel based engines and batteries. The latters have been chosen because of their exibility during operations and their promising improvements over next years. The technological horizon considered in this study is the 2035: thus some critical hypotheses have been made for electrical components, airframe and propulsion. Due to the uncertainty associated to these data, sensivity analyses have been performed in order to assess the impact of technologies variations. Toevaluate the advantages of the proposed concept, a comparison with a conventional aircraft(EIS 2035), based on evolutions of today's technology (airframe, propulsion, aerodynamics)has been made