48th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting Including the New Horizons Forum and Aerospace Exposition

4 - 7 January 2010, Orlando, Florida

AIAA 2010-1206

Design and Flight Testing of an ECO-Sport Aircraft

C. Jouannet * , D. Lundstrm , K. Amadori , P. Berry
Linkping University, Linkping, 581 83, Sweden

The presented work is centered on different concept studies for greener sport aircraft.
The goal is to show the possibility to manufacture a sport aircraft based on different
environmental friendly propulsion systems. A first theoretical part consists of creating a
sizing program for studying different concepts. Then the gathered knowledge will result in
the realization of two flying down-scaled demonstrators. This study was realized during a
student project over a 5 month period.

I.

Introduction

lobal warming and environmental issues are becoming a major driver in product development and for societal
stockholders, and have become key issues for aircraft transportation, as addressed by the ACARE 2020 goals.
These aspects are today mainly taken into account by large aircraft manufacturer such as Airbus and Boeing, but
will soon have an impact on the development of small sport aircraft as well. The sport aircraft market can be
compared to the car industry, where the development is going toward increasingly environmental friendly products.
Most general aviation aircraft adopt decades old combustion engines. Among all the piston powered aircraft flying
in the USA, approximately 170 000, the majority have been certified for leaded fuel, leading to higher greenhouse
gas production than on modern piston engines. As the environment protection is becoming a central problem, also
private pilots begin to be aware and pay attention to the topic. Their leisure activity is only responsible for a small
part of the polluting emission in the world, but they still are potential customers for a green sport aircraft. Also in
Europe there is a potentially large market:

according to AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association), there are more than 200 000 private pilots in
Europe.
according to FFA (Fdration Franaise dAronautique), there are more than 42 000 private pilots and
more than 600 aero clubs in France.

There are several alternative propulsion systems that can be considered. For instance, a 2-seat Dimona motor
glider powered by fuel cells was flown by Boeing, ref xx. Other similar projects have been presented by Politecnico
di Torino, ref xx. Some other alternative involving fuel cells and solar panel have been presented by Lisa-Aviation,
and the Italian consortium SkySpark (ref). The Solar Impulse project is an example of a solar panels driven aircraft
that is designed to fly around the Globe in the coming years.
The current project focused on designing a eco-friendly sport aircraft, based on different available technologies for
creating a green or greener aircraft. The chosen technologies are the following:

Fuel Cells

Solar Panels

Batteries

Hybrid

Assistant Professor, Dept of Management and Engineering, christopher.jouannet@liu.se, AIAA Member.

PhD Student, Dept of Management and Engineering, david.Lundstrom@liu.se, AIAA Student Member.

PhD Student, Dept of Management and Engineering, kristian.Amadori@liu.se, AIAA Student Member.

Lecturer, Dept of Management and Engineering, patrick.berry@liu.se.

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Copyright 2010 by Copyright 2010 by Christopher Jouannet. Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., with permission.

These different technologies can be combined in order to create a propulsion system.

A. Educational challenges
Over the years there has been a dramatic reduction in ongoing aircraft projects. Todays aircraft design engineers
are lucky if they will be involved in one or two complete projects during their entire careers. This is in sharp contrast
to the golden age, when an engineer was likely to be part of several projects during his career, see Table 1.

Table 1. Design career length versus military aircraft design by decade (adapted from Scott9)
This situation creates an issue regarding the education of aircraft design engineers. When they start their
professional life they will be assigned to an ongoing project and they may be involved in that for a long time before
starting on a new project. The teaching approach as proposed by Linkping University is to allow future aircraft
engineers to participate in a complete aircraft design project, from requirements to flight testing, as a preparation for
their very first steps into industry.
The other major challenge in aerospace education is changing demands from the industry regarding the type of
knowledge the yet to be engineers should be educated for. Most of university aerospace educations are focused on
developing students analytical skills and not as much to develop the synthesis capabilities nor the innovative
perspective needed for aircraft design. Recent changes in educational perspective, such as the CDIO initiative10,
initiated by the Aerospace institute at MIT and tree Swedish universities, Linkping University being one among
them, try to apply a more synthetical view on engineering education, by introducing small practical assignments into
the regular courses. This approach is adopted in a larger scale for the aircraft design education at Linkping
University, and was adopted before the creation of the CDIO initiative. In the same spirit Young5 argued in favour to
design projects in engineers education.
Nowadays team-work is increasingly important. Being able to present results and ideas in a selling manner is also
an important skill, as well as to be able to convert ideas into something practical and useful. This is something which
Universities seldom care much about, but that is certainly important, i.e. to bridge the cliff between the students
mostly theoretical life into the more practical life in industry. One of the most important issues is to be able to gain a
holistic viewpoint from the very start in working life, i.e. to possess a kind of helicopter view with regard to the
product or project one is involved in. One way of preparing for that insight is to carry out projects like the aircraft
design project at Linkping University.

II.

Goals

The goal of this project is to study the feasibility of a green sport aircraft. The project consists of two parts: one
full-scale study and the second part dedicated to the realisation of a scaled demonstrator. The main goals for the
project are defined by the following requirements:

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Realisation of a sizing program for sport aircrafts

Study and comparison of different configurations

CAD representation of the different configuration

Realisation of two flying demonstrators.

This was set has being the minimum requirement for the project course. Based on these requirements, the work was
divided into different packages assigned to smaller groups of students that should cooperate on common tasks and
study the different configuration.

III.

Sizing program

A. Manufacturing Methods
The students have been provided with an existing sizing program that was previously developed at Linkping
University. Their task has been to complement it with the following modules:

Propeller model

Electrical engine model

Gas engine model

Hybrid engine model

Fuel cell propulsion model

Complement existing weight module

Battery model

Solar propulsion model

Complement existing cost model

Complement existing sizing model

The sizing program should refer to a piston engine sport aircraft, where different type of green propulsion
alternatives should be included in order to determine their performances. The sizing program and baseline
configuration required to be calibrated on the requirements and specification for the piston engine baseline. The
sizing program also allows trade-off studies in form of how much greener could the aircraft be if the performance
are reduced by a given percentage. Aerodynamic calculation have been carried out with lifting-line theory based
tools, such as Tornado.

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Figure 1. Scheme of the sizing tool

IV.

Full Scale design solution

In order to compare what could be achived with alternative propulsion systems, the Lancair Legacy was chosen to
be a baseline as a representative high performance sport airplane. The Legacy was also used for benchmarking the
sizing program and validate the performance estimation and the weight estimation.

Figure 2. The baseline aircraft chosen for the project: the Lancair Legacy
The work conceptual design work was reduced to 4 different versions to be studied. Any kind of trade off from the
base line was permitted, the goal being to produce a configuration having the less compromise from the base line.
The goal is to achieve performances as close as possible to the baseline. Some key parameters were set to be driving
the design; those parameters were decided to be:

Range

Endurance

Cruise speed

Other parameters such as respecting FAR-23 rules were also imposed. Other similitude with the Lancair Legacy was
up to each group to decide. In order to reduced the number of propulsion combination the following were chose to
be studied:

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A.

Fuel cells

Piston engine + batteries

Fuel cells + solar cells

Hybrid Propulsion

The main challenge with an hybrid propulsion is to find a suitable way to connect the two
different engines and to study the best way to combine the both engine. The hybrid propulsion is
directly inspired from the current development in the automotive industry.

Figure 3. CAD representation of the hybrid propulsion concept

Table 2 present the current preliminary figures obtained for an hybrid propulsion system.
Length
Fuselage

10000mm

Width

900mm

Height

1422mm

Wingspan

16000mm

Wing
Airfoil
Electrical Engine

FX63137
101HP

Engines
Combustion Engine

Transmission

Weight Estimation

96HP

Max Torque

558Nm

Max Power

196HP

Prop. Shaft rpm

2500rpm

Weight

<1000kg

Table 2. Specification of the hybrid propulsion concept

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B. Solar Panels and Batteries Propulsion

Solar powered aircraft have been fascinating man kind for some decades[6-8], and several
design have been presented from the first solar powered manned aircraft in 1979 by Solar Riser8,
to the recent Solar Impulse project1, design for a round the world trip. The common issues for all
those configurations have been the small available amount of power and the need for extreme
low weight.
The configuration present here offers similar characteristics, with an airplane close to a glider.

Figure 4. CAD representation of concept with solar panels and batteries

Fuselage

Length
Wingspan

7500mm
17800mm

Wing

30kg/m2

Wing Loading
Electrical Engine
Engines
Batteries

Cruise

11kW (peak:
19kW) 11,5kg
5,92kWh
47kg

Altitude

4000ft

Speed

0,1M

Endurance
Weight Estimation

80min

Weight

Table 3. Specification of the concept with solar panels and batteries

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C. Fuel Cells Propulsion

Fuel cell propulsion has been demonstrated by Boeing2 on a Dimona aircraft that has been
modified in order to keep the weight down. Other studies on the usage of fuel cells have been
presented1-3. The usage of fuel cells have been proposed in many case for mide size UAV4, and
Georgia Tech have been flying a UAV demonstrator powered by fuel cells.

Figure 5. CAD representation of the fuel cells powered concept

Here 3 different configurations are presented and compare to the Lancair Legacy. The main
differences between them being a compromise between range or higer cruise speed.
Fuel Cell Eco Sport
Performance

Lancair Legacy

Config. 1

Config. 2

Config. 3

Wing Loading (kg/m )

130

130

130

130

MTOW (kg)

997

1198

1230

1358

OEW (kg)

680

893

900

828

Power (kW)

200

93

93

76

Cruise Speed (km/h)

444

287

287

251

Stall Speed (knots)

61

59

59

59

Cruise Altitude (ft)

8000

10000

10000

10000

Take-off Distance (m)

244

590

600

900

Landing Distance (m)

275

415

418

418

Range (nm)

1000

212

211

480

Rate of Climb (ft/m)

3000

517

507

329

Table 4. Specification of the fuel cells powered concepts

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D. Fuel Cell and Solar Panel Propulsion

One major challenge with solar power aircraft is the take off where the highest power is
needed, and that case will often be one man drivers for the final design. By combining a fuel cell,
able of delivery higher power than solar panel alone, during the take off, the aircraft can be
design around the available solar power at cruise condition.

Figure 6. CAD representation of the fuel cells and solar panels powered concept

Similar concept have been presented by Lisa-Aviation, the concept has a tendency to be close
to a motor glider. But the extra power available from the fuel cells reduced the issues with
having only solar power to rely on. One alternative to that solution could be combining solar
power and batteries, but that solution does not offer any extra benefit compare to combining fuel
cells and solar cells. The characteristics of the presented aircraft are displayed in table 5.

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Length

7000mm

Propeller

3 blades

Wingspan

18000mm

Aspect Ratio
Wing Loading

17
70kg/m2

Specifications
Wing Area
Power

19m2
70kW/94HP

Payload

100kg

OEW

1230kg

MTOW

1330kg

Altitude

8000ft

Speed

169km/h

Endurance

80min

Takeoff distance

495m

Landing field

300m

Max Range

340nm

Performances

Rate of Climb

470ft/min

Time to Climb

18min

Table 5. Specifications of the fuel cells and solar panels powered concept

V.

Demonstrator

Two demonstrators have been built to further investigate the concepts. The first one is a solar panels powered
aircraft (visible on the right hand side in Fig. 7) while the second carries a small hydrogen fuel cell capable of
producing 3W (left hand side in Fig. 7).

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Figure 7. The students during one of the test flights of the two scaled demonstrators

VI.

Conclusion and Work Plans

The two demonstrators will be used during the summer and early fall 2009 to further investigate the concepts
and to gather as much information and knowledge as possible about the technologies involved. The flight test
campaign will also be used as the practical application for the course Prototype Testing centred on theory and
methods used to be adopted during testing phases.

VII.

References

Solar Impulse Project homepage, www.solarimpulse.com

Wentz W. H., Myose R. Y. and Mohamed A. S., Hydrogen-Fueled General Aviation Airplanes, AIAA-2005-7324, 5th
Aviation, Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference (ATIO) 26 - 28 September 2005, Arlington, Virginia
2
Friend M. G., Dagett D. L., Fuel Cell Demonstrator Airplane, AIAA-2003-2868, AIAA/ICAS International Air and
Space Symposium and Exposition: The Next 100 Y, 14-17 July 2003, Dayton, Ohio
3
Romeo G., Moraglio I. and Novarese C. ENIFICA-FC: Preliminary Survey & Design of 2-Seat Aircraft Powered by Fuel
Cells Electric Propulsion, AIAA 2007-7754, 7th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration and Operations Conference (ATIO),
18 - 20 September 2007, Belfast, Northern Ireland
4
Moffitt B. A., Bradley T. H., Design Space Exploration of Small-Scale PEM Fuel Cell Long Endurance Aircraft, AIAA
2006-7701, 6th AIAA Aviation Technology, Integration and Operations Conference (ATIO), 25 - 27 September 2006, Wichita,
Kansas
5
Brandt S., Gilliam F., Design Analysis Methodology for Solar-Powered Aircraft, Journal of Aircraft Vol. 32, No. 4
July-August 1995
6
Hemker H., Solarflugtag der Stadt Ulm. Icare2 gewinnt Berblinger-Preis (in German), article in Flug Revue
September 1996
7
Sunseeker I and Sunseeker II, www.solar-flight.com
8
Boucher, R. J., History of solar flight AIAA-1984-1429 SAE, and ASME, Joint Propulsion Conference, 20th, Cincinnati,
OH, June 11-13, 1984. 14 p.
1

Scott, W. B., Industrys Loss Expertise Spurs Counterattack - Aerospace in Crisis Aviation Week & Space Technology,
March 13, 2000, pp. 60-61
10
http://www.cdio.org
11
http://www.lisa-airplanes.com/fr/hy-bird/

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