Safety and certifiability evaluation of distributed electric propulsion airplane in EASA CS-23 category

Abstract

Distributed Electric Propulsion (DEP) is one of the unconventional airplane architectures of interest in the quest for decreasing aviation environmental footprint. This configuration integrates strong and innovative couplings between systems and aircraft design disciplines. To address limitations of the traditional approach for certification and of the associated means of compliance when certifying innovative products, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) issues in 2017 a novel certification philosophy that relies on high-level objective-based safety requirements. In this context, this paper presents a safety and certifiability evaluation of DEP airplane in EASA CS-23 category, with a methodology for aircraft-level safety assessment during preliminary design, a certification gap analysis with regards to existing means of compliance, and some proposals to clear the certification path for DEP configuration.