Range Estimation Of A Novel Concept Electric Aircraft Based On Modified Breguet Equation

The electric vertical-take off and landing aircraft are able to perform vertical flights, equipped with an electric propulsion and energy storage system. This kind of aircraft has gained more importance during the last decades, in particular for urban aerial mobility. Its design is function of several project specifications, among them the range to cover a cruise flight mission profile. The present work is intended to show a modified Breguet equation for the range estimation applied to a novel electric aircraft concept. The advantage of this equation is to avoid the knowledge of parameters which are difficult to be found a-priori in a preliminary design phase. It is worth noticing that the modified Breguet estimated range needs further corrections to obtain a correct effective cruise range. For this reason, the estimated range is compared with the effective cruise range obtained with an energy balance equation. Results show that the estimated and theoretical range values are very close and comparable, hence the modified Breguet equation for electric aircraft is correct. In order to validate the present results, a comparison with several urban air mobility aircraft is performed.