Preliminary Sizing of Hydrogen-Powered Jet Aircraft Considering Fuselage Cross-Section Variations

The work presented here details a class I aircraft sizing methodology, TITAN, applied to innovative hydrogen-powered jets. The methodology is applied to a clean sheet design of the Airbus A320 and A350-900 and a retrofit of the A380. Different combinations of circular/elliptical hydrogen tank and fuselage are considered, to minimize the fuel consumption of the chosen architecture, knowing that elliptical tanks introduce a significant mass penalty. For short-haul planes the baseline configuration, with a circular tank at the back of the fuselage, shows the optimal results. For an A350-like aircraft, it is interesting to couple a circular tank with an elliptical fuselage, achieving a reduction of the wetted surface which leads to an improvement of overall aircraft performance. For the A380 retrofit, the payload-range capabilities of the original aircraft are significantly reduced. Besides, the energy efficiency of such retrofitted aircraft is worse than that of existing long-range aircraft with similar design missions, because of a greater structural mass to payload ratio.