HYFLIP

Hybrid Methods for the Safe Design of Climate-Neutral Aircraft for Impact Problems

The subject of the project ‘Hybrid methods for the rapid evaluation of crash events in aircraft preliminary design’ (HYCEF) at TU Braunschweig is the integration of the evaluation of crash scenarios into the preliminary design of future, environmentally friendly and resource-saving commercial aircraft. In order to achieve the goal of climate-neutral aviation, future commercial aircraft must be equipped with new propulsion technologies.

For large commercial aircraft, the use of LH2 as fuel in a classic kite configuration is one way of realising this goal. However, in addition to classic commercial aircraft, the development of non-classic configurations, such as fully electric eVTOL configurations, is also playing an increasingly important role. For both approaches, there is no experience with regard to the crash safety of the aircraft, although proof of this is relevant to certification. Currently, the topic of crash safety is only considered in late phases of aircraft development, which can lead to costly redesigns. This state of the art process is particularly problematic for future developments due to a lack of experience. In HYCEF, the IFL is developing hybrid methods combining data- and physics-based analysis, allowing for rapid prediction of the influences of design decisions in the preliminary design phase. Since the parameter space here is still large, the parameters are subject to frequent changes and the level of detail of the design is low, speed, automatability and robustness are of central importance for the usability of the methods. Together with the partner TUHH in the HYFLIP joint project, methods will be developed for estimating crash and ditching scenarios for future, climate-neutral aircraft, which will allow these approval-relevant topics to be taken into account in early development phases.

Project partner | TU Hamburg Institute for Fluid Dynamics and Ship Theory