Design of electrical drive components and drive system investigations for aviation
The project "Exploration of electric Aircraft Concepts and Technologies 2" (EXACT2) is DLR's central integration project with regard to the question of how the contribution of aviation to global warming can be drastically reduced. Specifically, the aim is to show which technology components, aircraft concepts and measures can be used to meet aviation's contribution to the 1.5 °C target of the Paris Agreement. In addition, the economic viability of various scenarios will be developed. This requires a large number of cross-sector disciplines and their effective cooperation, building on the previous EXACT project.
Compared to EXACT, a higher level of detail of the promising concepts (turboprop, mild hybrid, plug-in hybrid) is implemented and the entire transition phase towards highly climate-reduced aviation is considered, as well as the focus on the economically and ecologically most important short-, medium- and long-haul segments. On the one hand, this achieves a higher level of confidence and, on the other, takes into account the complexity of the global transition in aviation.
Due to the complexity of the overall system and the associated uncertainties, some of which are large, a scenario-based approach is used. This allows trends to be derived on the basis of probability ranges as to which of the combinations of technology modules, aircraft concepts and measures have the greatest economic and ecological potential.
The overarching goal of EXACT2 is to identify possible paths to climate-reduced and affordable aviation. To this end, the scenarios investigated as part of the project, consisting of technology modules, aircraft concepts and measures, will be evaluated holistically from an economic and ecological perspective. This is based on the most promising aircraft concepts, see Figure 2, from the predecessor project EXACT. There are two main differences:
In order to reduce the uncertainties at aircraft level and to be able to make more precise statements, the fidelity is significantly increased.
The assessment driven by long-term potentials is expanded with scenario-based modeling of the transition phase from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. This allows economic and ecological effects in the coming decades to be mapped and temperature peaks in the atmosphere to be used as a metric.
The aim is also to place the climate impact of the scenarios examined in a holistic global context. As described in Chapter 1, the contribution of aviation to achieving the 1.5°C target of the Paris Agreement is used as the primary assessment metric, as this maximum temperature in the near-earth atmosphere will be the climatologically decisive benchmark in the coming decades.In addition, the economic behavior of the scenarios is developed from the sub-component and energy source production level to the global assessment level.
Concrete goals:
Promising aircraft concepts from EXACT are developed in great detail in order to achieve a high confidence level and reduce uncertainties. The aim is to achieve a similar confidence level for all concepts. In concrete terms, this means that the relevant disciplines of the concepts with high uncertainties must be calculated using higher-quality methods.
