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One of the thrusts of the Advanced Integrated Fuel System (AIFS) initiative, sponsored by the Fuels Branch of the Aero and Propulsion Power Directorate at Wright Laboratories (WL/POSF) with partial funding from the United States Navy, is to realize the potential improvements in aircraft thermal management systems due to the 100 degrees F increase in fuel heat sink capacity of JP-8+100 fuel. This paper summarizes the conceptual design and top-level trade studies conducted by Northrop Grumman Corporation (NGC) under an AIFS contract. These studies examined the air vehicle-level payoffs of JP-8+100 fuel applied to the (1) F/A-18C/D (representing an existing fleet aircraft), (2) F/A-18E/F (representing an aircraft currently under development), and (3) a more-electric aircraft/subsystem integration technology (MEA/SUIT) configured version of an F/A-18 (representing a future aircraft). The objectives and approaches of these studies are presented.

The use of electric actuators, such as electro-hydrostatic actuators (EHA), for moving flight control surfaces is an integral part of the more-electric aircraft (MEA) concept to replace inefficient, centralized hydraulic systems with power-on-demand electrical systems. Removing the centralized hydraulic system will, however, eliminate an effective heat transfer network, thus resulting in an aircraft with less overall heat to reject but with localized “hot spots.” Under the Air Force MEA Thermal Management program, Northrop Grumman is assessing the cooling requirements for an MEA version of the F/A-18 aircraft through detailed thermal modelling and computer simulation. Lumped-parameter EHA thermal models have been developed to characterize component heat transfer within their operating environments using realistic actuator duty cycles generated from six-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) aircraft simulation.