Aircraft Design with Well-to-Wake Optimization Under Uncertainty

Exploiting hybrid-electric propulsion in the aviation sector represents one of the possible strategies to tackle the challenging goals imposed by institutions on reducing anthropogenic climate impact. At the same time, Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAFs) are regarded as the most viable short-term solution to address this requirement. We propose a general aircraft design framework that encompasses the combination of new solutions, i.e., alternative fuels and electric propulsion. The analysis is enriched by including the Well-to-Tank (WTT) processes that precede the aircraft operations, so that the entire fuel life cycle is taken into account. Given the rather unknown technological readiness of SAF production on the large scale, the effects of uncertainties that emerge during the WTT phase on the climate impact and aircraft energy requirement are evaluated by leveraging the potentiality of Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) techniques. The integration of uncertainty propagation with an optimization process enables the assessment of the impact of variance in the WTT chain on optimal design decisions. The presented methodology has been applied to a hybrid SAF/electric regional aircraft architecture with the aim of identifying the optimal hybridization strategy to minimize the overall Well- to-Wake (WTW) climate impact and energy consumption. Results show that the probability distributions of the selected observables are significantly influenced by the technology level of the battery pack. Furthermore, within a specified battery specific energy range, the optimal power management differs depending on the specific objective being pursued.