Modeling and Feasibility Analysis of Hydrogen Fuel Cells Powered All Electric Aircrafts

Abstract

At present, the global climatic change is concerning the countries all over the world. Most of the countries are struggling to control the carbon emission, which gives rise to a series of green transition of different industries. Among these industries, the aviation industry is growing rapidly and stubborn, which requires the development of sustainable energy sources for aviation technologies to achieve zero net carbon emission. Within the sustainable energy sources, hydrogen fuel cells have been wildly acknowledged for their high power density and being environmentally friendly. This paper firstly introduces the mathematical models of fuel cells and aircrafts’ aerodynamics, and then builds an integrated model in the MATLAB/Simulink including the subsystems of fuel cells, i.e. electric power supply, flight environment analysis and aerodynamic systems. Moreover, the model is used to simulate a real electrical aircraft powered by the hydrogen fuel cells to verify the effectiveness of the model and analyze the feasibility of all electrical aircrafts (AEA) with hydrogen fuel cells.