Imon Chakraborty

• PhD (AE), MSAE, B.Tech (ME)
• Associate Professor at Auburn University

The aerospace industry’s progressive transition toward More Electric subsystem architectures presents some unique challenges for the early design stages: in part, due to the unavailability of historical data and the presence of a large number of subsystem architecture possibilities. Such novel subsystem architectures, which may have a pronounced ef...

The progressive transition from conventional to More Electric aircraft subsystem architectures occurring in the aerospace industry necessitates earlier consideration of subsystem impacts in the design process. Significant challenges arise in this regard due to the unavailability of historical information regarding unconventional subsystem architect...

The aerospace industry is currently transitioning to More Electric subsystem architectures due to steadily improving electric technologies and the technology saturation of established conventional architectures. For aircraft with such unconventional architectures, the lack of historical information and the presence of increased inter-subsystem inte...

The use of active flow control technology for augmentation of aircraft aerodynamic performance is of considerable interest to the aerospace industry. Research to date has included subscale and full-scale wind-tunnel experiments as well as limited flight-test demonstrations. Out of several possible applications of active flow control to commercial a...

Active Flow Control is at present an area of considerable research, with multiple potential aircraft applications. While the majority of research has focused on the performance of the actuators themselves, a system-level perspective is necessary to assess the viability of proposed solutions. This paper demonstrates such an approach, in which major...

This study presents an attainable moment subset-based approach to integrate flight dynamics and control requirements in the conceptual design of a multi-tiltrotor urban air mobility vehicle featuring turbo-electric propulsion system architecture. The goal of this work is to ensure that the control effectors are sufficiently sized to meet the maneuv...

This paper presents the extension of the Trajectory Control System, originally developed for full-envelope flight control, to encompass Conventional Takeoff and Landing and Short Takeoff and Landing capabilities. The Trajectory Control System incorporates the best aspects of the Total Energy Control System, originally developed for conventional fix...

The complex vertical takeoff and landing configurations currently under development necessitate flight control system design that enables substantial reductions of pilot workload through Simplified Vehicle Operations. This paper shows optimization and simulation of such a flight control system architecture for a subscale vectored thrust aircraft co...

To enable the Simplified Vehicle Operations paradigm for the upcoming urban/advanced air mobility vertical takeoff and landing concepts, their flight control system architectures must be designed to provide largely standardized control responses to pilot inceptor inputs. This paper demonstrates such a flight control system for three dissimilar vehi...

This paper describes the flight test validation of a Trajectory Control System on a subscale lift-plus-cruise vertical takeoff and landing urban air mobility aircraft concept. The aircraft was sized using the Parametric Energy-based Aircraft Configuration Evaluator framework. A simulation model was developed using the Modular Aircraft Dynamics and...

The ongoing development of numerous novel vertical takeoff and landing configurations necessitates flight control system design that enables the Simplified Vehicle Operations paradigm. This paper shows flight test results for one subscale lift-plus-cruise and one tilt-wing configuration employing such a flight control system architecture. Pilot inc...

The complex vertical takeoff and landing configurations currently under development necessitate flight control system design that enables substantial reductions of pilot workload through Simplified Vehicle Operations. This paper shows optimization and simulation of such a flight control system architecture for a subscale vectored thrust aircraft co...

This paper presents a methodology for optimizing a Total Energy–based control system architecture for a lift-plus-cruise vertical takeoff and landing urban air mobility concept. The Total Energy Control System algorithm, which was originally developed for fixed-wing applications, is extended to also be applicable to hovering and transitioning fligh...

Novel vertical take-off and landing advanced air mobility aircraft which are overactuated and transition between vertical and forward flight modes pose unique challenges for the design of safe and robust full-envelope fly-by-wire flight control systems. This paper presents a methodology for designing and optimizing a control system architecture for...

Conventional aircraft sizing methods face challenges in analyzing all-electric or hybrid-electric novel aircraft configurations, such as those for urban air mobility applications. The vast design space containing both continuous and discrete design variables and competing design objectives necessitates searching for not necessarily a unique optimal...

This work investigates the simplified vehicle operations paradigm, which seeks significant reductions in pilot workload and training requirements through the holistic design of flight control laws, control inceptors, and cockpit displays in the context of vertical takeoff and landing urban air mobility aircraft using piloted flight simulations. Two...

This paper describes the application of a research and development pipeline at the Vehicle Systems, Dynamics, and Design Laboratory to the design, fabrication, and flight testing of a subscale lift-plus-cruise vertical takeoff and landing urban air mobility aircraft concept. The aircraft was sized using the Parametric Energy-based Aircraft Configur...

It is imperative that safe and robust flight control system architectures are employed for the novel vertical takeoff and landing urban air mobility concepts currently in various stages of development. Unique challenges stem from the over-actuated nature of these vehicles and the fact that they transition between vertical and forward modes of fligh...

This paper demonstrates parametric definition and sizing of all-electric and hybrid-electric variants of a dual-purpose ducted fan lift-plus-cruise aircraft configuration. The dual roles include passenger transportation for urban air mobility as well as transportation of supplies and personnel for military applications. The impact of battery techno...

This paper demonstrates an integrated approach to the sizing and analysis of all-electric, hybrid-electric, and turboelectric variants of a lift-plus-cruise urban air mobility vertical takeoff and landing concept using the Parametric Energy-based Aircraft Configuration Evaluator. In lieu of assuming a point mass performance model, the aircraft is t...

This paper demonstrates integrated vehicle and propulsion system sizing and performance analysis using Parametric Energy-Based Aircraft Configuration Evaluator, an aircraft sizing methodology and framework integrating discipline analyses for aerodynamics, propulsion, and weight estimation with parametric geometry definition, resizing, and energy-ba...

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2022-3513.vid This paper demonstrates an integrated approach to the sizing and analysis of all-electric, hybrid-electric, and turbo-electric variants of a lift-plus-cruise urban air mobility vertical takeoff and landing concept using Parametric Energy-based Aircraft Configuration Evaluator. This si...

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2022-1516.vid This paper demonstrates parametric definition and sizing of all-electric and hybrid-electric variants of a dual-purpose ducted fan lift-plus-cruise aircraft configuration. The dual roles include passenger transportation for Urban Air Mobility as well as transportation of supplies and...

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2022-1515.vid This paper demonstrates integrated vehicle and propulsion system sizing and performance analysis for a vertical takeoff and landing tilt-wing Urban Air Mobility aircraft family with two variants. The first variant features an all-electric propulsion system architecture while the secon...

Air vehicle sizing requires the ability to estimate the propulsive power and energy requirements of a flight vehicle as well as its weight. Existing tools and methods for aircraft sizing typically focus on a specific air vehicle category, generally assume a conventional fuel-burning propulsion system architecture, and employ a point-mass performanc...

The novel Urban Air Mobility and On-Demand Mobility aircraft being actively developed today have configurations that differ significantly from conventional fixed- and rotary-wing air-craft, as well as multi-rotor/distributed propulsion systems that are electric or hybrid-electric in nature. It is likely that the first generation designs will be hig...

Air vehicle sizing requires the ability to estimate the propulsive power and energy requirements of a flight vehicle as well as its weight. Existing tools and methods for aircraft sizing typically focus on a specific air vehicle category, generally assume a conventional fuel-burning propulsion system architecture, and employ a point-mass performanc...

The safety trends in General Aviation flight operations, despite recent improvements, continue to lag behind those of Commercial Aviation. The age and diversity of the General Aviation fleet as well as the varying experience and proficiency levels of the pilot population contribute to the safety challenge. Given the ubiquitous nature of General Avi...

Performance models facilitate a wide range of safety analyses in aviation. In an ideal scenario, the performance models would show inherently good agreement with the true performance of the aircraft. However, in reality, this is rarely the case: either owing to underlying simplifications or due to the limited fidelity of applicable tools or data. I...

A thermal ice protection system prevents or dispatches ice formed on critical aircraft components like wings or nacelles by heating them either through electro-thermal or pneumatic means. The power requirements for such a system are a function of flight and atmospheric conditions and protected surface area. The developed analysis framework allows e...

The drive for more efficient flying vehicles in all categories may necessitate a significant departure from the tube-and-wing or rotary-wing norms that have been the mainstay of aviation for many decades. This poses challenges for predicting the aerodynamic characteristics and the weight build-up of such unconventional vehicles in early design phas...

The aerospace industry’s current trend towards novel or More Electric architectures results in some unique challenges for designers due to both the scarcity or absence of historical data and a potentially large combinatorial space of possible architectures. These add to the already existing challenges of attempting to optimize an aircraft design in...

The environmental control system is the most significant consumer of non-propulsive power for modern commercial transports. In recent years, there has been a shift towards bleedless environmental control systems pack solutions instead of the conventional pneumatic design. The ramifications of such an architecture change are significant and the impa...

Electrification of the major aircraft subsystems, in particular the environmental control system, is of significant interest to the aerospace industry due to the potential for fuel savings through reduced non-propulsive power usage. To evaluate and assess the impact of such subsystem architectures, it is necessary to integrate the sizing of the eng...

Ambitious aircraft emission goals combined with airline fuel costs are driving an increasing focus on energy efficiency for the aircraft industry. Aircraft Equipment Systems (AES) perform key aircraft functions, such as pressurization or control surface actuation, but they are also energy consumers. Selecting the AES technologies of the future is i...

The aerospace industry’s progressive transition towards More Electric subsystem architectures presents some unique challenges for conceptual design, in part due to the unavailability of historical data and the presence of a large number of subsystem architecture possibilities. Such novel subsystem architectures, which may have a pronounced effect o...

The increasingly aggressive performance targets for new aircraft designs that drive fuel efficiency, emissions, noise, cost, and operability requirements necessitate a renewed focus on optimal onboard energy management for the aircraft systems and subsystems. Optimal energy management, which has traditionally been considered local to each aircraft...

Traditional aircraft conceptual design focuses primarily on the sizing of the vehicle and its propulsion system. The effects of the vehicle subsystems are largely accounted for implicitly based on historical data and trends, and their detailed design is typically relegated to subsequent design phases. Thus far, this has been possible largely due to...

Hybrid Wing Body configurations, such as the N2A-EXTE, have the potential to meet NASA Environmentally Responsible Aviation N+2 goals. These configurations have redundant elevons typically spanning the entire trailing-edge of the wing, whose large areas result in the generation of large hinge moments. To ensure aircraft stability with a reduced sta...

The increasingly aggressive performance targets for new aircraft designs which drive fuel efficiency, emissions, noise, cost, and operability requirements necessitate a renewed focus on optimal on-board energy management for the aircraft systems and subsystems. Optimal energy management, which has traditionally been considered local to each aircraf...

The gas turbines on commercial aircraft produce both propulsive power, and non-propulsive or secondary power for aircraft subsystems. Secondary power off-takes are in the form of either pneumatic power or mechanical power. When a gas turbine supplies secondary power in any form, its capacity to produce propulsive power reduces and there is an incre...

In order for Personal Air Vehicle concepts to positively impact the current transportation system, such vehicle concepts must not only be technologically feasible, but also economically viable. The latter requires, among other things, that the costs associated with training a human operator to fly the vehicle be substantially reduced. Further, oper...

Due to the inefficiency of gas turbine engines at low power settings, increased environmental awareness has prompted the investigation of alternate solutions for aircraft ground operations. For smaller aircraft, electric taxiing, in which the aircraft is taxied using APU-powered motors driving the wheels, has recently been demonstrated. The feasibi...

Hybrid wing-body configurations are currently an active field of research as potential candidates to meet NASA Environmentally Responsible Aviation N + 2 goals. One characteristic of these configurations is the presence of a large number of redundant flight control surfaces. However, the design process and decision rationale for a given control sur...

This paper presents a study of aircraft featuring truss-braced wing configurations that have been optimized for minimum fuel consumption using multidisciplinary design optimization. The investigation proceeds following an earlier Boeing SUGAR N+3 study, which selected the truss-braced wing concept as the most promising of several N+3 concept vehicl...

Hybrid Wing Body configurations are currently an active field of research as potential candidates to meet NASA Environmentally Responsible Aviation N+2 goals. One characteristic of these configurations is the presence of a large number of redundant flight control surfaces. However, the design process and decision rationale for a given control surfa...

Hybrid Wing Body configurations, such as the N2A-EXTE, have the potential to meet NASA Environmentally Responsible Aviation N+2 goals. These configurations have redundant elevons typically spanning the entire trailing-edge of the wing, whose large areas result in the generation of large hinge moments. To ensure aircraft stability with a reduced sta...

Historically, during aircraft conceptual design, only limited consideration has been given to the aircraft subsystems, which have traditionally been addressed in the subsequent design phases. However, the design of future All Electric Aircraft or More Electric Aircraft will require a paradigm shift due to the lack of historical data and the presenc...

The Personal Air Vehicle concept is currently an active research area with the potential to fill a considerable shortcoming in the transportation system by providing a mode of aerial transportation accessible to and usable by the general public. In addition to being highly cost-efficient and light-weight, the vehicle must score highly on Ease of Us...

Hybrid Wing Body configurations are currently an active field of research as potential candidates to meet NASA ERA N+2 goals. One characteristic of these configurations is the presence of a large number of redundant flight control surfaces. However, there does not seem to be a rigorous approach in the open literature for selecting the number of red...

Over the last several decades the design of subsonic civil transport aircraft has largely focused on making improvements to well-understood, well-established designs in the interest of minimizing risk. This has resulted in comparatively little consideration for designs that achieve major improvements through more radical changes in the overall conf...

Modern day commercial aviation has a strong incentive to pursue the design of advanced aircraft concepts, motivated both by growing environmental concerns and more challenging airline economics. In this regard, the Truss-Braced Wing concept has significant potential to achieve appreciable improvements with regard to fuel efficiency, emissions, nois...

As part of the More Electric Initiative, there is a significant interest in designing energy-optimized More Electric Aircraft, where electric power meets all non-propulsive power requirements. To achieve this goal, the aircraft subsystems must be analyzed much earlier than in the traditional design process. This means that the designer must be able...

This work pertains to the analysis of electric control surface actuation for a More Electric Aircraft at the actuator, vehicle, and mission levels. Two different actuation solutions utilizing electrohydrostatic and electromechanical actuators were identified, and their pertinent characteristics were developed using Pacelab SysArc, an aircraft syste...

This work pertains to the optimization of electric actuators for the primary and secondary flight control surfaces of a More Electric Aircraft. Electrohydrostatic and electromechanical actuators are considered and optimized in accordance with the flight loads and actuator requirements identified in a separate work by the same authors. For the purpo...

This work documents the development of a MATLAB/Simulink based methodology for the sizing, simulation, analysis, and optimization of electric actuators for the primary and secondary control surfaces of a More Electric Aircraft. For a given aircraft and control surface configuration, the control surface flight loads are first evaluated taking into a...

This paper analyzes the mitigation of an unavoidable T -bone collision, where an “intelligent” vehicle executes an aggressive time-optimal rotation to achieve a favorable relative orientation with another vehicle prior to impact. The current paper extends the previous work by the authors on this problem, by modeling additional vehicle dynamics (neg...

This work pertains to the development of a MATLAB/Simulink based Modeling and Simulation (M&S) environment for the analysis of electric actuators for aircraft primary flight control surfaces. For each control surface, the environment estimates the loads generated by aircraft maneuvers and flight conditions, simulates the dynamics of the actuator, a...