TECH TALK
Electric Aircraft Are No Longer a Fantasy
A By John Pawlicki
s an industry, we hear about various experiments with differing approaches to electric aircraft. Some of these announcements have been in regards to solar-powered aircraft staying aloft
for long periods of time, and others have concentrated replacing legacy propulsion (namely gas-powered engines) and control systems with electronics by getting rid of heavy pneumatic/hydraulic systems. The first set of seemingly true aircraft breakthroughs are now emerging due to essentially copying the Toyota Prius approach — namely, a hybrid approach. The two major issues facing electric aircraft (including those that will use a hybrid approach of utilizing both gasoline-powered engines with electric motors) are weight and battery limitations. Due to the current state of technology for each of these limitations, it is doubtful that
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breakthroughs in either issue would allow the industry to launch a non-gasoline power flying machine. Instead we must refine both areas and find a way to take lessons from the automotive world. We must take an evolutionary step with hybrid aircraft where engines are driven by a set of gas and electrical power sources. Basically, we must put wings on a Prius.
FIRST, THE EASY PART: IMPROVING WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW
Advancements in engine technologies have moved along on an evolutionary scale since the early days of aviation. This slow advancement has allowed aircraft and engine manufacturers to constantly upgrade the power, reliability and efficiency of gas-powered engines. Other evolutionary advancements were improvements in materials with not only aluminum and steel alloys, but also with plastics, titanium, composites and ceramics being used to develop lighter and more fuel-efficient aircraft. This allowed aircraft to get larger, fly farther and higher, and provide the aviation industry with an economical means to operate aircraft anywhere in the world. More recently we have seen a movement into bio-fuel
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mixtures, which have primarily been aimed at providing less-ecologically-damaging aircraft, but also to help alleviate supply chain issues for certain use cases (military and regions where most or all oil is imported). Before the recent expansion in shale oil and fracking, which has expanded the oil industry in the U.S. and Canada greatly, there were many concerns about the ready supply of oil in a world where the demand was growing, and fears of running out of oil seemed quite valid. For at least a few years, these concerns seem to have diminished due to not only an expansion of global oil production, but due to conservation efforts and economic slowdown in key parts of the world. These have now resulted in an oversupply of oil. Each of these three sets of advancements (better engine technology, lighter aircraft materials and less-polluting fuel) has extended the life of the current state of the art in gas-powered aircraft, and will probably allow the world’s aviation industry to maintain the current fleet of legacy aircraft for a few more decades. However, with each new technological development,
the fate of purely gas-powered aircraft nears its end that much sooner.
05 2015 28
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