Systematic Aircraft Propulsive System Generation for Sizing, Evaluation and Selection
Enzo DELLA BELLA, Valérie POMMIER-BUDINGER, Scott DELBECQ, Joël JEZEGOU, Marija JANKOVIC, Alain LEFEBVRE
Abstract. To mitigate the projected increase in emissions of the aeronautical sector, companies investigate novel propulsive systems. Three main aspects are considered: energy sources (e.g., electricity, hydrogen), powertrain technologies and equipment (e.g., fuel cells, smart motors), and propulsive architectures (e.g., series/parallel hybrid-electric, distributed propulsion). The need to study these alternatives results in a vast design space, as each potential solution has benefits and drawbacks. To facilitate the exploration of the design space, this paper presents a methodology to generate, evaluate and select aircraft propulsive architectures. The application of the method to design the propulsive system of a twin-engine commuter aircraft illustrates its capabilities. It enables easy comparison between propulsive architectures, hybridization strategies and technology assumptions.
Keywords
System Architecture, Automatic Architecture Generation, Safety, Aircraft Design, Hybrid-Electric Aircraft
Published online 7/20/2026, 6 pages
Copyright © 2026 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA
Citation: Enzo DELLA BELLA, Valérie POMMIER-BUDINGER, Scott DELBECQ, Joël JEZEGOU, Marija JANKOVIC, Alain LEFEBVRE, Systematic Aircraft Propulsive System Generation for Sizing, Evaluation and Selection, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 69, pp 469-474, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644904251-85
The article was published as article 85 of the book CEAS – AIDAA Conference 2025
Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
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