Interconnected state-space modeling for turboelectric aircraft

Due to their recent success in the automotive and marine industries, electric propulsion systems are being revisited within the aviation industry as a potential solution for meeting its increasing consumer demand. Although a nominal electric propulsion system design may be proposed based on the average aircraft power requirements, experience from terrestrial power systems suggests that this design may be more or less conservative depending on power dynamics. To begin to explore this idea, this paper presents a state-space modeling approach that interconnects the propulsion dynamics with the vehicle dynamics. Specifically, this paper demonstrates how, starting from the non-linear dynamics of a medium-sized transport aircraft equipped with turboelectric propulsion, an equilibrium and the linearized dynamics about it are computed. This modeling approach is derived generally in terms of propulsion and aircraft parameters so that it can be used for conducting system level requirements analysis that account for dynamics.