Conceptual Design of a Powered-Lift eVTOL Aircraft with a Fuel Cell–Battery Hybrid System for Urban Air Mobility

This thesis presents the conceptual design process of a Powered-Lift electric Vertical Take-off and Landing (eVTOL) Aircraft with a Fuel Cell–Battery Hybrid System for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) applications. The primary objective is to evaluate the feasibility and benefits of such aircraft as a promising solution to the growing traffic congestion in ever more urbanized cities, with the additional advantages of reducing air pollution from traditional road transport systems. The study focuses on the potential of hybrid powerplant configurations that combine the high power density of batteries for power-demanding flight phases such as take-off, with the high energy density of fuel cells for energy-demanding flight phases such as climb and cruise. Following the initial sizing process, a design space exploration is conducted to evaluate how various design parameters influence aircraft performance and to identify the operational ranges where hybrid solutions become competitive with battery-only configurations. Multiple powerplant architectures are explored, including battery-only, fuel cell-only, and hybrid systems. Ultimately, several configurations are proposed and evaluated using different figures of merit for various urban operational scenarios.