Colloquia

Summary

This thesis develops a modular Modelica framework for thermal management in turboelectric aircraft, transitioning from previous FORTRAN approaches to address heat generation challenges from electrical propulsion components. The framework includes object-oriented cooling loop components, compartment thermal models, and both steady-state and transient heat exchanger models.

All models were verified with code to code comparisons. The transient heat exchanger model captures thermal inertia effects that steady-state methods miss, particularly important during dynamic flight phases like takeoff and go-around where model differences are most significant.

Applied to a complete turboelectric aircraft power generation system using a design flight envelope, the work demonstrates that modular physics-based models can effectively simulate electrified aircraft cooling systems. The object-oriented structure provides a flexible preliminary design tool that enables fast architecture reconfiguration without extensive code modifications.

Figure: How can we reduce fuel consumption? DRAGON — onera.fr. https://www.onera.fr/en/news/how-can-we-reduce-fuel-consumption%3F-dragon.