This week at the Oshkosh air show in Wisconsin, the world’s largest air show, GE Aerospace debuted its new livery design for the aircraft test bed for NASA’s Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstration (EPFD) project, a landmark effort to help prove the feasibility of hybrid electric flight for commercial aviation.
For the hybrid electric test flights, GE Aerospace is partnering with Boeing and its subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences using a modified Saab 340B aircraft powered by GE’s CT7 engines.
Electric cars have become common, but building a commercial electric plane is a different story. Just ask Mohamed Ali, vice president for engineering at GE Aerospace. “Electric motors behave very differently at altitudes above 10,000 feet,” he says. “They are susceptible to plasma arcing, for example, and much more difficult to manage.”
One summer as a teenager, Christine Andrews visited NASA Mission Control Center in Houston with her family. Marveling at the spacecraft on display, she contemplated the thrill of contributing to space discovery. It wasn’t a stretch. She was already participating in high school symposiums for women in math and science. Yet the idea was daunting. “You look at all the buttons in the capsules and think, Who knows what all of these do, let alone how they all work beneath that?” she recalls.
GE Havacılık, Boeing ile hibrit elektrikli uçuş testi tanıtım programında iş birliği yapacak
EVENDALE, Ohio – 4 Şubat 2022 – GE Havacılık, hibrit elektrikli tahrik sisteminin uçuş testlerini desteklemek için modifiye edilmiş Saab 340B uçağı ve CT7-9B turboprop motoru kullanan Boeing'i seçti.
Last October, NASA and GE Aviation announced a new partnership to mature a megawatt-class hybrid electric engine that could power a single-aisle aircraft. Today the project got one step closer to takeoff. GE Aviation has selected Boeing to modify the plane that will test the propulsion system in the air.
