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Flight management system for hydrogen-powered aircraft in cruise

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Abstract

The minimization of the direct operating cost for hydrogen-powered aircraft is formulated in this paper as an optimal control problem and is solved based on Pontryagin’s minimum principle. As a consequence, the optimum cruise flight speed is determined assuming cruising at a constant altitude. The optimization criterion corresponds to the minimization of a functional representing the trade-off between the cost of hydrogen fuel and time-dependent costs, which are related by a parameter denoted by cost index. The value of this parameter is introduced by a pilot into the flight management system of the aircraft. The HY4 aircraft model is used to obtain numerical results for the proposed methodology.

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(Adapted from [13])

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, H3G 2W1, Canada

    Maxim Kaptsov & Luis Rodrigues

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  1. Maxim Kaptsov
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  2. Luis Rodrigues
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Correspondence to Luis Rodrigues.

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Kaptsov, M., Rodrigues, L. Flight management system for hydrogen-powered aircraft in cruise. AS 4, 201–208 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42401-021-00097-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42401-021-00097-8

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