As aviation explores lower-emission propulsion, hydrogen fuel cells present a potential option for regional and commuter aircraft. However, integrating fuel-cell stacks, hydrogen storage and delivery, air supply, thermal management, electric propulsion, and controls involves closely connected engineering challenges, since changes in one subsystem affect the others.
Gamma Technologies‘ GT-SUITE platform aims to address this by modeling these systems together, including fuel-cell behavior, cryogenic hydrogen storage, cooling and heat rejection, electric powertrains, and transient operation. It also covers mission-level simulation across flight phases and different modeling fidelities, along with design-of-experiments, sensitivity analysis, surrogate modeling, and optimization to examine system-level trade-offs. This approach aims to help engineers understand these interactions early, supporting informed architecture decisions for future hydrogen-powered aircraft.
Image courtesy: Gamma Technologies