A Heritage to Build Upon: The ERAU EcoEagle
Presentation Type
Invited Speaker
In Person or Zoom Presentation
In-Person
Campus
Daytona Beach
Status
Faculty
Faculty/Staff Department
Aerospace Engineering
Presentation Description/Abstract
In 2009, environmentally conscious students from Embry-Riddle aspired to compete in NASA's Centennial Challenge, the Green Flight Challenge. The challenge was to fly 200 miles at over 100 mph using less than the energy equivalent of one gallon of gas per passenger. Flying at 200 passenger miles per gallon was a challenge harkening back to the innovation of other historic challenges like the Longitude Prize, the Orteig Prize and the Ansari X Prize.
Led by Aerospace Engineering graduate student Lori Costello and advisor Professor Pat Anderson, a team of more than 200 ERAU students started on a design. Early on it was clear that electric propulsion and a glider-like airframe would be necessary to meet the performance. The team pitched James Ray and the Ray Foundation on using a Stemme S-10 as the base airframe and using a parallel battery/gas hybrid propulsion unit. The team believed a hybrid would be more commercially viable than a battery-powered aircraft.
In 2011, backed by donations from the Ray Foundation and others, the student team flew the world's first manned parallel hybrid aircraft. Four teams showed up in Santa Rosa for the competition: two battery-electric, one hybrid and one conventional. A battery-electric aircraft won, but recent trends show the students were right: hybrids are proving more commercially viable.
This is their story and their legacy.
Keywords
Green Flight, EcoEagle, hybrid airplane, hybrid electric, parallel hybrid, passenger miles per gallon
A Heritage to Build Upon: The ERAU EcoEagle
In 2009, environmentally conscious students from Embry-Riddle aspired to compete in NASA's Centennial Challenge, the Green Flight Challenge. The challenge was to fly 200 miles at over 100 mph using less than the energy equivalent of one gallon of gas per passenger. Flying at 200 passenger miles per gallon was a challenge harkening back to the innovation of other historic challenges like the Longitude Prize, the Orteig Prize and the Ansari X Prize.
Led by Aerospace Engineering graduate student Lori Costello and advisor Professor Pat Anderson, a team of more than 200 ERAU students started on a design. Early on it was clear that electric propulsion and a glider-like airframe would be necessary to meet the performance. The team pitched James Ray and the Ray Foundation on using a Stemme S-10 as the base airframe and using a parallel battery/gas hybrid propulsion unit. The team believed a hybrid would be more commercially viable than a battery-powered aircraft.
In 2011, backed by donations from the Ray Foundation and others, the student team flew the world's first manned parallel hybrid aircraft. Four teams showed up in Santa Rosa for the competition: two battery-electric, one hybrid and one conventional. A battery-electric aircraft won, but recent trends show the students were right: hybrids are proving more commercially viable.
This is their story and their legacy.