What will power our vehicles in the future?

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#2971060 21-Sep-2022 17:26

Batman:

France to restart all nuclear reactors

https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220902-france-to-restart-all-nuclear-reactors-by-winter-amid-energy-crunch

Good. And I say this as someone fully aware of the dangers - I have worked inside the Dai'ichi Fukushima power plant that we are all aware of, and was dangerously nearby during the disaster.

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tdgeek

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#2971118 21-Sep-2022 18:10

Gurezaemon:

Batman:

France to restart all nuclear reactors

https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220902-france-to-restart-all-nuclear-reactors-by-winter-amid-energy-crunch

Good. And I say this as someone fully aware of the dangers - I have worked inside the Dai'ichi Fukushima power plant that we are all aware of, and was dangerously nearby during the disaster.

Agree. Nuclear with its issues is not the forever home, but given the current Putin environment, its the best choice

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#2971383 22-Sep-2022 07:20

Technofreak:

If you were fitting a piston or more likely a turbine engine at those locations the propellor would be that same as for an electric engine.

The way I see it - and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong is:

Simplistically, if you compare two propellors, both with 4 blades driven by two equally powerful powerplants, one combustion, one electric, they'll be very different in two ways - rpm range - and torque maps.

Electric motors produce significantly more torque than reciprocating or turbine engines. Essentially they begin producing 100% of their torque at zero rpm - peak torque is instantaneous.

The FAA was worried enough about the potential for very high torque values "attributable to the novel technology" used in MagniX's Electric Engine Airworthiness Standards they introduced a Special Condition (no. 15) to 'prevent engine torque from causing detrimental aircraft effects', ie. a sudden application of power tearing the motor out of the aircraft.

As electric motor rotor rpm's increase, torque drops off almost linearly until at some (arbitrarily) high rpm it reaches zero - You get a torque map that looks like a straight line.

Rotating combustion engines start at close to zero torque, increasing with rotational speed until peak torque's reached at certain rpm, then drops off again to theoretical zero - Their torque map looks like a bell curve.

Whether geared up or down (to different final rpm ranges) the torque curves retain the same shape.
'Peak Power's different, but it's still a function of torque and rpm. Peak power from an electric aircraft motor occurs in a completely different place than a hydrocarbon fueled one.

Classic style propellers are optimized for both climb and cruise, adjustable thrust & pitch settings.
A classic Lycoming 540 might produce peak power at, say 2600 rpm - it's direct drive prop's optimised for that speed but also for a range of rpms around it - reduced power, cruise etc.
A P&W PT6A's gearing converts a higher rotational speed to a ballpark 2000 prop rpm, again you've got a prop optimised for a fairly wide range around the middle of it's torque curve for takeoff and climb.

An electric motor's best operating at a set, fixed rpm. MagniX's magni500 motor's designed to rotate at 1,900 rpm, allowing for a direct drive prop, there's 750 hp and more than 2,065 lb-ft of torque at that setting.
You don't need to throttle up or down - it just sits there, at that speed producing gobs of torque. There's no real advantage - in economy, or efficiency - throttling back to cruise.

I once saw the remains of an aircraft engine (a converted automobile Nissan V6) spread out across a hangar floor.
It had experienced a catastrophic - lock up - failure during takeoff, and the prop's inertia had snapped the forged crank clean off.

That's because combustion engines - piston ones in particular - also use the prop's inertia as a flywheel, to even out energy flows, and ensure the engine keeps rotating.

Electric motors don't need a flywheel. Theoretically electric props can have no mass and still work fine.
So Hartzell - and others - are producing these extremely lightweight, very rigid carbon-fibre props optimized for high torque at a fixed rpm.
They're about to introduce a more radical 'shankless' e-prop design this year to reduce weight even further - they describe it as being built from "advanced structural composites and aerospace-grade aluminum alloys"..

I haven't seen one, but it seems they're going to use an extremely light foam carbon monocoque structure with the composite skin carrying most of the blade loads.

Their existing series of Custom propellers for electric aircraft are all optimised for different service parameters, but all seem to have more in common with each other than with general aviation designs.
The propellers they're providing to magniX motors - part of their “Advanced Air Mobility" series, are specifically designed for their electric motors.

Some are basically a fixed aerofoil, lightweight reduced-noise prop designed for a high-torque take off and climb. A very niche design.

Harbour Air's requirements fall right into this niche. They fly frequent, short trips along the coast of British Columbia and Washington state.
The huge majority of their flights are less than 30 minutes, VFR. No route exceeds an hour, and most flying time is full-power takeoff and climb.

Noise's a real issue for them, and a legislated restriction, so using a quiet, high torque electric motor, and a specially designed propellor's just what they need.
The very first test flight Mr. McDougal took, the motor torque was so high and instantaneously available that he said; “the aircraft just leapt out of the water and climbed like crazy".

Of course the custom 5-blade structural composite propellers they've designed for Eviation's Alice are different again.
Designed for cruising speeds of 250 knots and a maximum range of 440 nautical miles, the aircraft's going to need props optimised for cruise as well as climb.
I'd like to see one of those up close.

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#2971423 22-Sep-2022 08:33

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/travel/2022/09/fully-electric-seaglider-completes-its-first-test-flight.html

Technofreak

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#2971456 22-Sep-2022 09:32

Both RPM range and torque maps are irrelevant from the point of propellor blade design as was discussed in that thesis paper.

Instantaneous torque changes are a consideration for hub design and prop shaft integrity and as you point out other airframe considerations but in reality has no impact on blade design.

Instantaneous torque just means a quicker response, the power the propeller has to absorb is still the same and therefore the blade design isn't affected. As you say power is torque X RPM.

This power is aborbed by either changes in propeller RPM and/or propeller blade angle in the case of a constant speed propeller. To be efficient at the various speeds an aircraft operates at it needs to be fitted with a variable speed or more correctly a constant speed propeller. The forward speed of the aircraft has to be in the correct ratio to the propellers rotational speed for any given blade angle. If the aircraft speed changes and the propeller RPM remains constant the blade angle needs to change to keep the propeller at maximum efficiency. Hope that makes sense, I'm trying to explain it simply without being incorrect technically.

An electric motor's best operating at a set, fixed rpm. MagniX's magni500 motor's designed to rotate at 1,900 rpm, allowing for a direct drive prop, there's 750 hp and more than 2,065 lb-ft of torque at that setting.
You don't need to throttle up or down - it just sits there, at that speed producing gobs of torque. There's no real advantage - in economy, or efficiency - throttling back to cruise.

RPM range is irrelevant, there are turbine engines that run the same RPM for takeoff, climb, cruise and descent. You do need to "throttle up and down". It takes more power to climb than cruise and less power again in the descent.

Pretty well all engines of more than 200 HP run constant speed props. Torque is changed and thus power is changed but RPM doesn't change. The propeller automatically adjusts its blade angle to compensate. The same will happen for the electric engine.

Sure a propeller may be optimised for certain conditions but I so far I've seen nothing that makes an electric engine different. We have turbine aircraft which cruise with a propeller RPM of around 900 RPM and others around 2000 RPM and anywhere in between

Electric motors don't need a flywheel. Theoretically electric props can have no mass and still work fine.
So Hartzell - and others - are producing these extremely lightweight, very rigid carbon-fibre props optimized for high torque at a fixed rpm.
They're about to introduce a more radical 'shankless' e-prop design this year to reduce weight even further - they describe it as being built from "advanced structural composites and aerospace-grade aluminum alloys"..

Turbine engines don't require a flywheel. There are a lot of composite blades in use today, partly to reduce weight. The propellers are what they are weight wise because of the power they need to be able to absorb and the rotational forces involved.

I don't see why the shankless design is exclusive to an electric motor. It's just a evolutionary step that has bee sped up by trying to reduce weight for a electric aircraft that if sucessfull will be incoporated into propellers used on other types of engines.

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#2971951 23-Sep-2022 08:28

Technofreak:

..I don't see why the shankless design is exclusive to an electric motor. It's just a evolutionary step that has bee sped up by trying to reduce weight for a electric aircraft that if sucessfull will be incoporated into propellers used on other types of engines.

All good points. As I said I'm not an expert. I'll have a chat with an engineer, try and understand better why they're doing what they're doing and report back..

I do think Harbour Air electrifying their DHC-2 Beavers is cool though. They're a simple old-style STOL aircraft that - if anything does - lends itself to electrification.
They're not built any more, but a lot of them are still in use here, and parts are still supplied locally by Viking Air, a subsidiary of DH - who owns the Type Certificate.

Viking keep a bunch of old STOL aircraft flying - DHC-3 Otters, DHC-4 Caribou's, DHC-5 Buffalo's, SC7 Skyvans, SD330s, SD360s and others.
They also have a collection of factories in large hangars here at YYC, building upgraded DHC-6 Twin Otters.

Another DH subsidiary, Longview Aviation - refits “Super Scooper” amphibious firefighters (Canadair CL-215 and CL-415s), and builds new DHC-515 Firefighters here.
European Union countries have just ordered another 22 of them, a couple of friends of mine work on their avionics - and passed on some good news.

At a press event in one of their hangars on Wednesday, DHC CEO Brian Chafe said they're going to build a new, large, airfield and manufacturing complex just east of the City in Wheatland County.
'De Havilland Field' will cover 1,500 acres, have a couple thousand employees, it's own runways, aircraft and parts manufacturing and assembly plants, warehousing and their corporate head office.

The company's going to build three lines there; The DHC-515, the DHC-6 Twin Otter, and Dash 8-400's - the manufacturing rights of which Longview purchased from Bombardier a few years back.
The Dash-8 line's interesting. A subsidiary of Ratheyon called Pratt & Whitney Canada supplies the powerplants for almost all DHC's aircraft.

A couple of years ago they, and another Ratheyon subsidiary - Collins Aerospace - set up a joint program with DHC to integrate hybrid-electric technology into a DH Dash 8-100 flight demonstrator.
They took a former US Airways Express Dash 8-100, flew it to P&W's flight test facility in Mirabel, and replaced one of the aircraft’s 1.4 megawatt (1,900 hp) PW120 turboprops with their hybrid drive.

They called it STEP-Tech (Scalable Turboelectric Powertrain Technology) a 'high-voltage (100-500 kilowatt class) distributed turboelectric hybrid-electric propulsion system'.
Their parallel hybrid-electric system has a one megawatt (1,340 hp) 'thermal' engine (a gas turbine) and a 'combo' electric motor-generator mechanically coupled to the props.

Propulsion comes from either the motor-generator or the turbine, and both at once in situations requiring high thrust like takeoff and climb. In cruise only power from the thermal engine's used.
So the turbine can be downsized - optimized for cruise performance - with a more than 30% reduction in fuel burn and CO2 emissions compared to a modern regional turboprop airliner.

DHC sorted the integration of the hybrid-electric propulsion technology and batteries to the Dash 8-100 airframe, designed a modified nacelle, and the cockpit interfaces to monitor and control the hybrid-electric systems.
They're also conducting the flight tests and demonstration program and dealing with Transport Canada for the experimental flight permits.

Anyway, the new facility plans show - apart from manufacturing factories, fuel flow and paint plants etc. - a really massive design and innovation complex, and an equally large research facility.
Their hybrid system has - reportedly - been a success. They've already begun headhunting Aerospace Engineers, Propulsion and Air Systems Specialists and others locally.

It'd be very cool if they started hybrid aircraft production here.
Powering DH commercial aircraft with hybrid battery-electric systems would be a nice move into the future..

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#2971984 23-Sep-2022 09:28

I agree it is cool that they have put an electric engine on the DHC-2. A very niche use, but cool never the less.

The work being done on the STEP programme is also interesting. I'm not sure it will lead directly to a certified or commercially viable aircraft but I do have faith in the teams involved. They're not making bold fanciful claims about payloads, range, dates in service etc. Eventually it will lead to technology that will be used in future aircraft.

DHC, Collins understand the requirements and the challenges involved unlike the other pretenders like Heart (ES19 ES30), Regent (Sea Glider), Faradair, etc which will most likely disappear without ever achieving their grandious claims, sadly in the process will take a lot of unsupecting peoples money.

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#2971989 23-Sep-2022 09:40

NzBeagle:
MikeAqua:

I was talking to a mate this week who works for large NZ transport operator. They are going ahead with a green hydrogen trial for heavy transport. That includes establishing a refuelling network. I won't name the firm, because I don't know if its public knowledge yet. But I'm excited to see how it goes. I manage fishing boats that burn diesel and electrification offers absolutely nothing in that space, so hydrogen is the potential solution.

Hwr fit this profile and have publicly announced this plan. Bold and expensive bet, good that people are testing both avenues as there isn't currently a one for all.

Edit: I note Batman linked the news on the previous page

Yeah, it's HWR, I didn't know they'd gone public.

Mike

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#2975213 30-Sep-2022 08:34

I see that Eviation has flown their Alice for the first time. https://airwaysmag.com/first-flight-eviations-alice/

This is a 9-passenger aircraft, so a competitor for the likes of the Cessna Caravan. The big differences are the weight (Alice max gross is 16,500lb of which 8300lb is batteries, payload 5,000lb, Caravan max gross 8,000lb, payload 3,300lb) range (440nm vs 1000nm), cruise speed (250 vs 186 knots), and price (US$4M vs US$2.5M). Battery recharge time is 70 minutes (30 minutes for a 1-hour flight). So for short-haul flights from paved runways the Alice will out-perform the Caravan handsomely, and if electricity is cheap enough relative the Jet A1, perhaps well enough to recoup the price. Certainly several short-haul airlines think so, with somewhere around 140 aircraft already ordered.

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#2975260 30-Sep-2022 09:35

frankv:

I see that Eviation has flown their Alice for the first time. https://airwaysmag.com/first-flight-eviations-alice/

This is a 9-passenger aircraft, so a competitor for the likes of the Cessna Caravan. The big differences are the weight (Alice max gross is 16,500lb of which 8300lb is batteries, payload 5,000lb, Caravan max gross 8,000lb, payload 3,300lb) range (440nm vs 1000nm), cruise speed (250 vs 186 knots), and price (US$4M vs US$2.5MFree of charge under warranty. ). Battery recharge time is 70 minutes (30 minutes for a 1-hour flight). So for short-haul flights from paved runways the Alice will out-perform the Caravan handsomely, and if electricity is cheap enough relative the Jet A1, perhaps well enough to recoup the price. Certainly several short-haul airlines think so, with somewhere around 140 aircraft already ordered.

Yes, very interesting and exciting.

Think one is TAS (250 knots) and the other IAS (186 knots) . 186 IAS is 215 TAS at 10,000 feet. I know a caravan won't normally fly at 25,000 but 186 IAS is about 280 TAS at 25,000.

Their speeds are probably not that much different. Sure the Alice is more streamlined but it's also a lot heavier so a lot more induced drag.

In practical terms it's more of a VFR aircraft than an IFR aircraft due to the restricted range.

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#2975277 30-Sep-2022 10:12

frankv:

I see that Eviation has flown their Alice for the first time. https://airwaysmag.com/first-flight-eviations-alice/

This is a 9-passenger aircraft, so a competitor for the likes of the Cessna Caravan. The big differences are the weight (Alice max gross is 16,500lb of which 8300lb is batteries, payload 5,000lb, Caravan max gross 8,000lb, payload 3,300lb) range (440nm vs 1000nm), cruise speed (250 vs 186 knots), and price (US$4M vs US$2.5M). Battery recharge time is 70 minutes (30 minutes for a 1-hour flight). So for short-haul flights from paved runways the Alice will out-perform the Caravan handsomely, and if electricity is cheap enough relative the Jet A1, perhaps well enough to recoup the price. Certainly several short-haul airlines think so, with somewhere around 140 aircraft already ordered.

Impressive looking aircraft. Would make a great Strait hopper - assuming it has the same bad weather operability as the Caravan. SoundsAir flies when AirNZ cancel due to weather.

Mike

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#2975307 30-Sep-2022 11:27

Technofreak:

Think one is TAS (250 knots) and the other IAS (186 knots) . 186 IAS is 215 TAS at 10,000 feet. I know a caravan won't normally fly at 25,000 but 186 IAS is about 280 TAS at 25,000.

Good point. It wasn't actually stated in the article, but elsewhere confirms that the Alice quoted airspeed is TAS.

In practical terms it's more of a VFR aircraft than an IFR aircraft due to the restricted range.

Yes, also a good point. For IFR you need the ability to get to an alternate with 30 minutes reserve. The quoted total endurance is 2.8 hours, so Wellington-Christchurch (164nm) would be possible, then top-up the battery in (I assume) 30 minutes before doing the return flight. Wellington-Auckland (259nm) would be possible but a stretch, depending on what alternates were open, and requiring a longer recharge time. Of course, you wouldn't want to compete against AirNZ/Jetstar on those routes anyway.

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#2975361 30-Sep-2022 11:40

Be interesting to know if its 2.8 hrs endurance is at “best endurance speed” or normal climb-cruise-descent speeds. I have my doubts it will be able to do WLG-CHC holding WLG as the alternate with fixed reserves. Plus no possibility of “throwing another approach” worth of energy on, or holding for that matter.

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#2975448 30-Sep-2022 13:32

I personally wouldn't fly on a VFR only aircraft.

History suggests that is a bad idea in the region I live in.

Mike

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#2975475 30-Sep-2022 14:16

frankv:

I see that Eviation has flown their Alice for the first time. https://airwaysmag.com/first-flight-eviations-alice/

This is a 9-passenger aircraft, so a competitor for the likes of the Cessna Caravan. The big differences are the weight (Alice max gross is 16,500lb of which 8300lb is batteries, payload 5,000lb, Caravan max gross 8,000lb, payload 3,300lb) range (440nm vs 1000nm), cruise speed (250 vs 186 knots), and price (US$4M vs US$2.5M). Battery recharge time is 70 minutes (30 minutes for a 1-hour flight). So for short-haul flights from paved runways the Alice will out-perform the Caravan handsomely, and if electricity is cheap enough relative the Jet A1, perhaps well enough to recoup the price. Certainly several short-haul airlines think so, with somewhere around 140 aircraft already ordered.

its not really a competitor to the Cessna Caravan as the caravan carries far more load. 14 passengers vers 9. it really competes with the smaller private planes. most likely business use or personal to jump from small local airfields to the main airports.

orders for aircraft are not always proof thats its going to be successful.

this will be a rich mans toy for sure. i highly doubt it will be a serious public passenger craft. the cost of a ticket would be a whole lot more than any other air craft we have now. thats simply due to lack of seats and load capacity.

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