Design and Analysis of Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Short-to Medium-Range Regional Aircraft Configurations

This paper provides details of the conceptual design of a couple of short- to mid- range hydrogen fuel cell powered commercial aircraft. First, details of a hydrogen fuel cell powertrain are provided in which the design of each individual component is analyzed. A battery-fuel cell hybrid mode of propulsion is also presented in which a battery array supplements the fuel-cell power during the increased power requirements at takeoff and climb. An automated process is presented in which the fuel cell stacks are sized based on the power requirements of the propulsion system and the components of the powertrain. The aircraft is sized considering the required components and fuel tanks. A numerical code has been written in Python to automate this process in conjunction with a previously written analysis code which uses various empirical and numerical methods to estimate the overall range and performance of a given aircraft configuration. Using this combined code called WUADS (Washington University Aircraft Design Software), two hydrogen fuel cell powered aircraft configuration closely based on the Bombardier CRJ200 and Boeing 717-200 are analyzed. Several aircraft component performance values are used to represent the different technology levels. It is found that the hydrogen fuel cell propulsion would be technologically feasible by the year 2030 and will be highly efficient by 2035 or later. In addition, a number of ~100 passenger configurations are tested for different mission ranges and are compared to the efficiency of a hydrogen combustion powered aircraft configuration. These configurations included both a standard cantilever wing configuration and a truss braced wing configuration. it was found that the truss braced wing significantly increased the efficiency for range above 1000 nmi; however, it did not provide much benefit at shorter range. Also, it was found that approximately 2000 nmi range seems to be the point at which the hydrogen fuel cell powered aircraft configurations cease to be competitive in efficiency as the hydrogen powered gas turbine combustion configurations.