ONERA Ampere Electric Powered Future Aircraft

[hesham]

Hi,

ONERA’s mission statement for its AMPERE (Avion à Motorisation réPartie Électrique de Recherche Expérimentale) electric aircraft is fairly straightforward. “AMPERE is a demonstrator of a regional airplane with electric propulsion distributed, allowing to transport from 4 to 6 people over 500 [kilometers – 310 miles] in 2 hours. The objective of the AMPERE project is to bring to maturity the technology of distributed electric propulsion in order to transfer it to the industry.” ONERA, the Office National d’Etudes et de Recherches Aérospatiales (National Office for the Study and Research of Aerospace) is the French equivalent of NASA.

ONERA showed a one-fifth-scale model of AMPERE at the Paris Air Show last week, with spokesman and designer Jean Hermetz holding forth on the plane’s features. Pardon that the video is in French, but the images are universal. Note the wind tunnel tests at 1:45, showing attached flow over the wing segment on which the electric ducted fans are turning.

CAFE Foundation Blog - Page 24 of 149 - Information and discussion from the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation.

Information and discussion from the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation.

cafe.foundation

 

[Nicknick]

I found this document: https://www.onera.fr/sites/default/files/actualites/breves/Fiche_AMPERE_VA.pdf

There are some things I don’t really see, they claim:

“reduction of energy losses due to friction, due to boundary layer ingestion by means of the
32 fans located on the wing upper surface”

As we can see, all the fans are placed right in the front of the wings, so there is very little boundary layer to ingest. Boundary layer ingestion is usually not regarded as an advantage, many intake systems (e.g. NACA duct) are especially developed especially to avoid this. The total surface (inside and outside) of all those fans will be huge, I doubt, this will result in low friction compared to any well-known propulsion system. The outler of the fans will be highly turbulent, so the wings will not have anything like a laminar flow, which will also increase friction.

They might have been inspired by Lilium, which, at least, have some boundary layer to ingest…

 

[Stargazer]

More on the ONERA's electric airplane projects:
https://am.arts-et-metiers.asso.fr/manifestation_cr/873_compte_rendu.pdf

 

[Nicknick]

Intrestingliy, this presentation dates back to 2015 and shows a plane very simular to the current Lilium jet. At that time, the design of the Lilium jet lookeed very different, so the Lilium jet might have been a copy of the Onera jet and not the other way round.