Electric Aviation - NASA interview on Maxwell X57 - Part 3: Battery and Component Cooling Design

Parts in the NASA interview series:

In this third part of our video interview series with NASA on the X-57 Maxwell Electric Aircraft, we dive into the details of cooling.

The X-57 requires around 90-100 kW in cruise versus 250 kW during take-off. This variation in loading strongly determines the sizing, the cells, the layout etc. of the battery.

Everything is directly air cooled on the airplane. The battery is passively cooled. The cooling of the inverters and motors poses quite a big challenge. They reach their operating temperature within seconds, so it's important to minimize the amount of rejected heat as well as understanding the cooling requirements across the flight envelope.

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The AirShaper videos cover the basics of aerodynamics (aerodynamic drag, drag & lift coefficients, boundary layer theory, flow separation, reynolds number...), simulation aspects (computational fluid dynamics, CFD meshing, ...) and aerodynamic testing (wind tunnel testing, flow visualization, ...).

We then use those basics to explain the aerodynamics of (race) cars (aerodynamic efficiency of electric vehicles, aerodynamic drag, downforce, aero maps, formula one aerodynamics, ...), drones and airplanes (propellers, airfoils, electric aviation, eVTOLS, ...), motorcycles (wind buffeting, motogp aerodynamics, ...) and more!

[kirkdecker]

Exploding batteries!! Awesome!! Need more please and great vid!!

[isaacchiappetta]

Excelente Matéria e é muito Atual, parabéns pelo conteúdo de Extremo valor !

[mellis]

Great Post. Why aren't ultracapacitors used for a dual thrust system like this? High C rate U-caps could provide 180 seconds of climb out thrust. Tip props and blown wing could be used to climb to 10, 000 ft. Regenerative could be used to recharge the U-caps from 10, 000 to 2, 000 ft. Blown wing could be used from 2, 000 to ground to slow to 60knots. It seems like a great deal of weight and over-thermal could be removed from the system.

[myaccount]

This is interesting stuff, how does it only have 300 views??

[isaacchiappetta]

Acredito que se a própria estrutura da nave for a própria bateria irá aliviar muito o peso da mesma, pelo que estamos já vivendo dentre pouco tempo a evolução continua das baterias, experimentaremos a redução e moldagem e duração ( autonomia ) significativas para o uso em uma escala cada vez mais aplicável .