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In recent years, increased awareness on global warming effects led to a renewed interest in all kinds of green technologies. Among them, some attention has been devoted to hybrid-electric aircraft – aircraft where the propulsion system contains power systems driven by electricity and power systems driven by hydrocarbon-based fuel. Examples of these systems include electric motors and gas turbines, respectively. Despite the fact that several research groups have tried to design such aircraft, in a way, it can actually save fuel with respect to conventional designs, the results hardly approach the required fuel savings to justify a new design. One possible path to improve these designs is to optimize the onboard energy management, in other words, when to use fuel and when to use stored electricity during a mission. The purpose of this paper is to address the topic of energy management applied to hybrid-electric aircraft, including its relevance for the conceptual design of aircraft and present a practical example of optimal energy management.

To address this problem the dynamic programming (DP) method for optimal control problems was used and, together with an aircraft performance model, an optimal energy management was obtained for a given aircraft flying a given trajectory.

The results show how the energy onboard a hybrid fuel-battery aircraft can be optimally managed during the mission. The optimal results were compared with non-optimal result, and small differences were found. A large sensitivity of the results to the battery charging efficiency was also found.

The novelty of this work comes from the application of DP for energy management to a variable weight system which includes energy recovery via a propeller.

In the cylinders of a marine diesel engine, self-ignition occurs in a very short time after the fuel injection into the combustion chamber. Therefore, this paper aims to develop a model of diesel fuel spray for the early stage of fuel spray in the marine diesel engine. The main technical aspects such as nozzle diameter of the marine engine injector and backpressure in the combustion chamber were taken into consideration.

In this paper, laboratory experimental studies were carried out to determine parameters of fuel spray in an early stage of injection in the marine diesel engine. The optical measuring Mie scattering technique was used to record the fuel injection process. The working space was a constant volume chamber. The backpressure parameters in the constant volume chamber were the same as during the operation of the marine diesel engine. Based on the experimental studies and important Hiroyasu and Arai models of fuel spray presented in literature was proposed new model of fuel spray parameters for marine diesel injectors.

In this paper, the proposed new model of the two main parameters described fuel spray evolution”: new model of spray tip penetration (STP) and spray cone angle (SCA). New model propagation of fuel STP in time was included the influence of nozzle diameter and backpressure. The proposed model has a lower error, about 15%–34%, than the model of Hiroyasu and Arai. Moreover, a new model of the evolution over time of the SCA is developed.

In the future research of fuel spray process must be taken influence of the fuel temperature. Diesel fuel has a different density and viscosity in dependence of fuel temperature. Therefore are predicted of the expansion about influence of fuel temperature, new model of fuel spray for a marine diesel engine. The main limitations occurring in the research are not possible to carry out the research while real operation marine diesel engine.

An experimental test was carried out for a real fuel injector of a marine diesel engine. Design parameters and fuel injection parameters were selected on the basis of the actual one. In the literature, SCA is defined as a constant parameter for the specific preliminary data. A new model for the early stage of fuel spray of SCA propagation in time has been proposed. The early stage of fuel spray is especially important, because in this time comes in there to fuel self-ignition.