Having announced their joint venture at the Parish Air Show in 2019, Daher, Safran and Airbus have unveiled the results of their collaboration, the EcoPulse, to the public at this year's Paris Air Show.
The EcoPulse is a hybrid-electric distributed propulsion aircraft demonstrator which has already successfully passed ground tests and is due to perform its maiden hybrid-electric propulsion flight later this year. The project has been co-funded by the DGAC (the French Civil Aviation Authority) through France Relance and NextGeneration EU and is supported by CORAC (the French Civil Aviation Research Council).
The EcoPulse project is one of the largest collaborations in France in relation to aviation decarbonisation. It is aiming to evaluate the operational advantages of integrating hybrid-electric distributed propulsion, specifically focusing on CO2 emissions and reducing noise levels. This disruptive propulsion architecture enables a single independent electrical power source to provide power to several engines distributed throughout the aircraft. Additionally, the demonstrator will also evaluate the overall energy efficiency of the onboard system, to include high-voltage electrical propulsion with battery and turbogenerator, and control laws involved in such architecture.
EcoPulse is based on a Daher TBM aircraft platform which now has six integrated electric thrusters or e-Propellers (supplied by Safran), distributed along the wings. Its propulsion system integrates two power sources: a turbogenerator, i.e., an electric generator driven by a gas turbine (supplied by Safran), and a battery pack (supplied by Airbus). At the heart of this architecture is a Power Distribution and Rectifier Unit, responsible for protecting the high-voltage network and for distributing the available electrical power, as well as high-voltage power harnesses (both provided by Safran).
“Hybridization and electrification are key to the aerospace sector's decarbonisation journey. With EcoPulse, we learned a lot from developing the high-power battery pack entirely, from the monitoring system to the thermal runaway and short-circuit tests. Some of these key learnings are already applied in several of our demonstrators with the common ambition to lower emissions. We are now all eager to see this technology flying and continue to progress on our electrification roadmap,” said Sabine Klauke, Chief Technical Officer at Airbus.
