Flight Management System for Hydrogen-Powered Aircraft in Cruise

TL;DR

This paper develops an optimal control approach using Pontryagin's principle to minimize the operating costs of hydrogen-powered aircraft during cruise, integrating a cost index parameter into the flight management system.

Contribution

It introduces a novel optimal control framework for hydrogen aircraft cruise optimization, incorporating cost trade-offs and pilot-adjustable parameters.

Findings

Optimal cruise speed determined for hydrogen aircraft

Cost minimization balances fuel and time-related expenses

Numerical results demonstrate effectiveness of the proposed method

Abstract

The minimization of the Direct Operating Cost (DOC) 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 (FMS) of the aircraft. The HY4 aircraft model is used to obtain numerical results for the proposed methodology.