Fleet Analysis of a Hybrid Turboelectric Commercial Regional Jet under NASA ULI Program

Under the NASA University Leadership Initiative (ULI) program, researchers from multiple institutes are collaborating on development of technologies for a hybrid turboelectric distributed propulsion (HTeDP) regional jet which aims to enter service in the 2030 timeframe. The performances of the aircraft for a typical mission has been evaluated in the previous work. However, from the existing literature, there is seldom studies on the fleet performances for a hybrid or turboelectric aircraft. Therefore, this paper performs research on a fleet of the ULI HTeDP aircraft, by conducting mission-level analyses on missions with different payloads, ranges, and hybridization schedules. In addition, the assumptions for power grid life-cycle cost and emissions are used to predict the corresponding life-cycle cost and emissions for the selected fleet. A sensitivity analysis is further performed to study the impacts of the assumptions on the fleet life-cycle cost and emissions. It is also studied how much the life-cycle cost and emission for power grid need to be improved to meet the expected benefit target brought by hybridization.