We investigated the competition between the weight of an aircraft and its onboard waste heat recovery unit (WHRU) performance based on the integrative thermodynamic approach. The constraints faced by the entire system and its global performance were related by a simplified aircraft model describing the total power required for lift and to overcome drag as a function of irreversibilities suffered by each WHRU component. The considered WHRU comprised three heat exchangers, namely intercooler, recuperator, and regenerator, a compressor, and a gas turbine with supercritical CO_2 as the working fluid. Heat exchanger and gas turbine weight was estimated by adopting the scaling relations. Preliminary results demonstrate the tradeoff between improved performance and added weight as well as the existence of an optimum where this trade-off is balanced. We therefore show how the WHRU design influences the aircraft performance through its own irreversibility and weight-related contribution to the power required to sustain the flight.
展开▼
