SAE AIR 8678:2022-08-01

The application of electric power for aircraft propulsion can take a variety of forms, ranging from partial electric to full electric. The introduction of electric engines to drive propulsors, along with the variety of available methods to generate electricity and store energy offers great degree of new design freedom for next-generation aircraft and aircraft architectures. This newfound design freedom exposes a need within the aviation industry to establish a common design language for electrified propulsion. While this need for a common design language is recognized, the intent of this document is to encourage innovation, providing reference architectures as a launching point for future work in this area. This document will describe potential electrified propulsion architectures and provide examples. While providing these example architectures, this document will develop common definitions for the elements of the architectures by defining: