Development of an electrical system prototyping tool to support the transition towards electric propulsion systems in aviation

Sammanfattning

The transition towards electric and hybrid-electric propulsion in aviation increases the need for rapid, structured development of aircraft electrical system designs. In the studied industrial context at The Rainforest, Saab’s innovation hub, early-stage electrical design work was mainly carried out in manually maintained Excel sheets. While initially practical, this workflow became difficult to scale as system complexity increased, leading to problems with collaboration, version history, system overview, data consistency, and usability for new users. This thesis investigates how a dedicated Electrical System Design Tool (ESDT) can better support early-stage aircraft electrical design than the existing spreadsheet-based workflow. The work combined a literature review with observations and discussions at The Rainforest to identify workflow problems, derive requirements, compare concept directions, and develop a prototype. The resulting ESDT is a browser-based client-server prototype built around a shared structured data model with linked graph and table views, explicit version handling, and controlled multi-user access. It was evaluated through a representative UAV-scale electrified propulsion architecture demonstration case, representing a turbine-generator replacement scenario. The results show that the prototype can support the transition from early design definition to a more structured and connected system representation. It reduces reliance on manual data duplication, improves overview, and clarifies version and collaboration handling. The thesis does not demonstrate full industrial readiness, but provides prototype-level evidence that a lower-overhead, structured tool can address key limitations of the previous Excel-based workflow.