Study and testing of a green trainer to transform small general aviation aircraft for training into a no-emission aerial vehicles

The large majority of current trainers are piston engine aircrafts. Their engine lasts 2,000 hours maximum. The idea is to substitute the engine with a green electric powerpack with the same performance of the original unit, but with no emission and basically with no maintenance. The powerpack should be easy to install, safe and should provide sufficient autonomy. This last part is particularly easy for trainers, since they fly in a very standard way. At morning, with the battery fully charged, the instructor and the student perform a flight that lasts typically from 20 minutes to 2 hours. On landing a de-briefing of the student takes place. This phase is followed by the briefing of the new student. These two steps take at minimum of 30 minutes. During this time the battery can be partially recharged. The process will continue for a full day, with a longer recharge during break times. Therefore, it is perfectly possible to have a one day autonomy (about 10 hours). This project is intended to develop an experimental green trainer to validate the best configuration for this power pack and to find-out critical issues on installation, safety, reliability and maintenance. Finally, a minimum number of 300 hours of flight will be performed to perform an accelerated test to individuate critical safety issues on the new proposal. This part should be considered as in integral part of the University Career for those aviation students who want to get involved in testing and engineering, rather than only flying. At the same time, converting powerplants from the combustion ones into the electric ones will contribute to reduce the polluting emissions in the air that produce micro-climate changes.