Prof. Ramesh Agarwal

Washington University in St. Louis Campus

ASME Fellow, IEEE Fellow

Professor Agarwal has worked in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Computational Acoustics and Electromagnetic, Computational Materials Science and Manufacturing, and Multidisciplinary Design & Optimization and their applications to problems in mechanical and aerospace engineering, and in energy and environment. He is the author and coauthor of over 600 publications. He is a Fellow of 28 professional societies including American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Physical Society (APS), and U.K. Institute of Physics among others. He has received many prestigious honors and national/international awards from various professional societies and organizations for his research contributions including the AIAA Reeds Aeronautics Award, SAE Medal of Honor, ASME Honorary Membership and Honorary Fellowship from Royal Aeronautical Society.

Speech Title: Analysis and Design of a Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Commercial Aircraft

This talk provides details of the conceptual design of a couple of short- to mid- range hydrogen fuel cell powered commercial aircraft. First, details of a hydrogen fuel cell powertrain are provided in which the design of each individual component is analyzed. A battery-fuel cell hybrid mode of propulsion is also presented in which a battery array supplements the fuel-cell power during the increased power requirements at takeoff and climb. An automated process is presented in which the fuel cell stacks are sized based on the power requirements of the propulsion system and the components of the powertrain. The aircraft is sized considering the required components and fuel tanks. A numerical code has been developed in Python to automate this process in conjunction with an analysis code which uses various empirical and numerical methods to estimate the overall range and performance of a given aircraft configuration. Using this combined code called WUADS (Washington University Aircraft Design Software), two hydrogen fuel cell powered aircraft configuration closely based on the Bombardier CRJ200 and Boeing 717-200 are analyzed. It was found that approximately 2000 nmi range seems to be the point at which the hydrogen fuel cell powered aircraft configurations cease to be competitive in efficiency as the hydrogen powered gas turbine combustion configurations.

Prof. Xu Long

Northwestern Polytechnical University, China

IAAM Fellow

Prof. Xu Long is a faculty member at Northwestern Polytechnical University, serving as a Ph.D. supervisor. He is a Fellow of the International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM) and a Senior Member of IEEE. He has been recognized as a young top-notch talent in the "Ten Thousand Talents Program" by the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the CPC and is listed among the top 2% of scientists globally. Prof. Long's main research areas focus on the mechanical properties, life analysis, and reliability evaluation of materials and structures under extreme loads. Prof. Long has led four projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, an international cooperation project under the Shaanxi Provincial Key Research and Development Program, a general project under the Shaanxi Province Natural Science Basic Research Program, a general project under the Guangdong Province Natural Science Foundation, and two projects under the Aerospace Science and Technology Fund. He is also the principal investigator of a Huawei Innovation Research Program, an industry-academia-research cooperation fund project with ZTE Corporation, and over ten technical research and pre-research projects with institutes like China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. As the first or corresponding author, he has published over 80 papers in top international journals in solid mechanics and SCI journals in materials and electronic packaging fields. His work includes seven ESI highly cited papers (including two hot papers), with 19 papers published in Q1 journals and 13 in Q2 journals according to the Chinese Academy of Sciences classifications. He has authored three academic books and serves as an associate editor for the SCI journal CMES, an editorial board member for JPM and IJAMD, and a guest editor for several SCI journals.