Flight Management System for Hydrogen-Powered Aircraft in Cruise

Abstract: The minimization of the Direct Operating Cost (DOC) for hydrogen-powered aircraft is formulated in this paper as an optimal control problem and is solved based on Pontryagin's minimum principle. As a consequence, the optimum cruise flight speed is determined assuming cruising at a constant altitude. The optimization criterion corresponds to the minimization of a functional representing the trade-off between the cost of hydrogen fuel and time-dependent costs, which are related by a parameter denoted by cost index. The value of this parameter is introduced by a pilot into the Flight Management System (FMS) of the aircraft. The HY4 aircraft model is used to obtain numerical results for the proposed methodology.