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Pre-pandemic image. Masks and distancing are now in place.
The Eco Eagle is the world’s first direct drive hybrid gas/electric aircraft.
The Diamond HK-36 is powered by a fully electric battery.
Embry-Riddle entered the only hybrid aircraft into NASA’s Green Flight Challenge.
Over the course of the past decade, three groundbreaking projects have set up the university’s aerospace design and research facility to help power this concept into a reality. Building on our past experiences, we went from developing the first-ever parallel hybrid aircraft, to modifying a Diamond HK-36 into a fully electric aircraft, followed by an unmanned VTOL vehicle that essentially taught itself to fly. Today, the technologies and lessons learned culminate with the university’s first UAM vehicle, currently under construction, and a new hybrid powerplant capable of delivering five times more electric power-to-weight than any existing battery system. Sustainability Competition Leads New Propulsion Research Our research in this space began in 2010 with our entry into NASA’s Green Flight Challenge, a competition to exceed 200 passenger miles per gallon at over 100 mph over a course that was 200 miles long. While we did not win the challenge, we entered the contest with the world’s first parallel hybrid aircraft, which is proving to be a more useful concept for commercial development and also set the stage for more propulsion research.
Coming away from the competition, it was clear that there was an opportunity to transform aircraft design using new methods of propulsion that could not only be greener than current aircraft, but could also allow missions to be flown that could not be flown with any class of modern aircraft. The path to understanding this technology would include lightweight batteries, generators, high-power electric motors matched to new quiet rotors and advanced controls for complex, electrically-driven onboard systems. After the NASA competition we started on a fully electric battery-powered Diamond HK-36 dubbed the eSpirit of St. Louis — in honor of Charles Lindbergh’s notion of balance between aviation and the environment. This aircraft serves as a testbed for our students to cut their teeth on the interdisciplinary aspects of mixing electrical engineering into what has most decidedly been an aerospace engineering space. Before moving to funded projects, students learn the basics about electric propulsive motors, motor controls and the specially built electric propellers attached to them.
Eco Eagle at a Glance
100 horsepower Rotax four-cylinder engine 40 horsepower electric motor Uses gas-type propulsion for power-hungry takeoff and landing stages and electric for the longer and less power consuming nature of cruise flight
Hybrid Clutch Assembly A hybrid clutch assembly
inserted between an internal combustion
engine and the propeller of an aircraft to provide a hybrid-powered aircraft.
U.S. PATENT NO. 9,254,922 A
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