Design solutions to overcome hydrogen-powered aviation challenges

Reducing the climate impact through a fast and extensive decarbonization is nowadays an important target across all sectors and thus also for aviation. In aviation, a drastic paradigm change is the adoption of hydrogen propulsion which is potentially very effective to achieve low emission targets. Fuel cell powering electric thrusters or hydrogen-fueled turbofan are just some of the technologies taken into consideration by the research and development departments today. As a consequence, also new aircrafts’ design could be revolutionary abandoning tube-and-wing shape for more optimized designs in terms of spaces and aerodynamic efficiency. Hydrogen propulsion leads the aviation sector to several technical and logistical challenges that need to be successfully overcome. In this report the aim is to frame the problem starting from environmental issues caused by pollution and then analyze and classify technologies available to identify next development pathways. To do this, it is important to find a coherent strategy that well synthetizes the technical approach in order to make it systematic.