Eco-Friendly Flight!

Picture thanks to web.mit.edu

Do you love traveling? Are you concerned of the environment and the much fuel that an airplane releases when flying? Well guess what! According to the article, “Fly the Eco-Friendly Skies” by Morgan Bettex, there are new designs of airplanes that will use 70% less fuel than a current plane, and also they will reduce noise and emission of nitrogen oxides. 

The design was presented last month by the department of Aeronautic and Astronautics in NASA.  Their objective was to create a concept for, and evaluate the potential of, quitter subsonic commercial planes that would burn 70 % less fuel and emit 75 percent less NOx than today’s commercial planes as Bettex reassures. In addition, NASA also wanted to develop an aircraft that could take off from shorter runways.  The MIT university worked along with NASA, and met NASA’s airplane requirement challenges designing two designs; which are “the 180-passenger D “double bubble” series to replace the Boeing 737 class aircraft, currently used for domestic flights, and the 350 H “Hybrid Wing Body” series to replace the 777 class aircraft now used for international flights.” The engineers conceived of the D series by reconfiguring the tube-and-wing structure. Instead of using a single fuselage cylinder, they used two partial cylinders placed side by side to create a wider structure whose cross-section resembles two soap bubbles joined together. They also moved the engines from the usual wing-mounted locations to the rear of the fuselage. Unlike the engines on most transport aircraft that take in the high-speed, undisturbed air flow, the D-series engines take in slower moving air that is present in the wake of the fuselage. Known as the Boundary Layer Ingestion (BLI), this technique allows the engines to use less fuel for the same amount of thrust, although the design has several practical drawbacks, such as creating more engine stress.  Not only does the D series meet NASA’s long-term fuel burn, emissions reduction and runway length objectives, but it could also offer large benefits in the near future because the MIT team designed two versions: a higher technology version with 70 percent fuel-burn reduction, and a version that could be built with conventional aluminum and current jet technology that would burn 50 percent less fuel and might be more attractive as a lower risk, near-term alternative. Carl Burleson, the director of the Federal Aviation Agency’s Office of Environment and Energy, said that in addition to its “really good environmental performance,” the D series is impressive because its bubble design is similar enough to the tube-and-wing structure of current planes that it should be easier to integrate into airport infrastructure than more radical designs. “You have to think about how an airport structure can support it,” he said. “ For some other designs, you could have to fundamentally reshape the gates at airports because the planes are configured so differently.”  Although the H series utilizes much of the same technology as the D series, including BLI, a larger design is needed for this plane to carry more passengers over longer distances. The MIT team designed a triangular-shaped hybrid wing body aircraft that blends a wider fuselage with the wings for improved aerodyamics.  The large center body creates a forward lift that eliminates the need for a tail to balance the aircraft.  The large structure also allows engineers to explore different propulsion architectures for the plane, such as a distributed system of multiple smaller engines. Although the H series meets NASA’s emissions-reduction and runway-length goals, the researchers said they would continue to improve the design to meet more of NASA’s objectives.

The MIT university is expecting a response from NASA in the next couple of months to see what is their decision regarding the two designs; there is still more work to do on the idea of the green airplane, because more technology still need to be explored and budget for it needs to be funded. Therefore, it might take a while for us to see this amazing idea of a GREEN AIRPLANE. Can’t wait to see it done, and be able to fly on one of them.  Great Job NASA! 

This information was obtained from http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/nplus3-0517.html; written by Morgan Bettex.