Master of Science Bright Appiah Adu-Gyamfi will Wednesday February 25th, 2026, at 12:15 hold his Thesis Defense for the PhD degree in Science. The title of the thesis is:
« Electric Aviation: Performance Modeling and Analysis of the Next Generation Electric Aircraft »
Aviation decarbonization has moved from being an aspiration to a necessity. Ongoing climate assessments and emerging policy frameworks now translate economy-wide targets into specific requirements for air travel. Meanwhile, sustained growth in passenger demand indicates that, without prompt action, aviation’s relative climate impact will increase further. Multiple technological pathways, such as sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), hydrogen, and electrification, can reduce aviation emissions. However, SAF and hydrogen remain constrained by immature supply chains, infrastructure, and certification pathways. By contrast, hydrogen-electric and battery-electric propulsion are the only options that yields zero in-flight CO₂ and NOₓ emissions (and can approach net-zero on a lifecycle basis with low-carbon electricity), making electrification the sole route to truly emission-free operation at the point of use. However, battery-specific energy and mass remain binding constraints for fully electric long-haul operations in the near term. This creates a practical and scientific need to focus on mission classes where electrification can deliver measurable impact with today’s and near-term technologies, and to do so with analytic methods that reflect the realities of aircraft operations and certification.
This thesis therefore focuses on credible near-term pathways where electrification can have a measurable effect: general aviation and short regional services with mission profiles and operational tempos compatible with current and emerging electro-propulsion capabilities. The main contribution is a system-level, mission-specific framework that converts climate goals into justified sizing and operational decisions within real-world constraints.
First, the thesis introduces the Extended Energy Balance & Distribution (EEBD) methodology, which couples lifetime energy distributions with intra-day energy balances to co-design battery capacity, charger power and cadence, state-of-charge windows, and reserve policies within aircraft mass limits. This framework produces operator-ready trade spaces linking battery sizing, charging infrastructure, and power-split strategy for hybrid and battery-dominant architectures.
Second, the thesis develops a high-fidelity dynamic simulation tool for all-electric regional missions that models propulsion along with non-propulsive loads such as environmental control, ice protection, battery thermal management, and auxiliaries throughout complete flight profiles while maintaining reserve and SOC constraints. A continuous altitude–temperature icing severity model is integrated to guide ice-protection duty under environmentally realistic conditions, enabling temperature-dependent energy budgeting, dispatch envelopes, and capacity–charger Pareto analyses.
The modeling approaches are validated against operational data to confirm their suitability, and a standards-aligned digital twin pathway is outlined to support transparent model calibration, certification discussions, and daily decision-making. Overall, the thesis reinterprets near-term aviation electrification as a comprehensive aircraft energy management challenge rather than just a propulsion replacement, offering methods, tools, and evidence to guide practical implementation across general aviation and regional services, inform infrastructure development and reserve policies, and establish a scalable foundation for future advances in storage, powertrains, and operations.
1st Opponent: Dr. Mahdi Damghani, FET - Engineering, Design and Mathematics, University of Western England (UWE) Bristol, UK.
2nd Opponent: Professor Petter Krus, University of Linköping, Linköping, Sweden
Internal member and leader of the committee: Dr. Karina Larsen, Department of Technology and Safety, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø.