Industry Weighs in on Green Aviation Tech

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Aviation’s future is bright … green. That was the environmentally promising message delivered during the Green Aviation Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM), held recently at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

More than 100 attendees from government, industry and academia listened as speakers discussed aeronautical research innovations that aim to lessen aircraft noise, reduce emissions, decrease fuel use, make gate-to-gate air travel more efficient, and boost safety beyond even today’s high levels.

“The goals NASA has outlined are ambitious. And that’s a good thing,” said Dr. Naveed Hussain, Boeing Company vice president of aeromechanical technology. “We at Boeing applaud it. What NASA is doing is very exciting, especially looking at the long-term view. In this business it’s hard to pivot every 18 or 24 months.”

The gathering included results generated by a series of technology demonstrations conducted by NASA’s Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) Project, which was created in 2009 and completed research in 2015.

ERA’s eight demonstrations focused on aircraft drag reduction through innovative flow control concepts; weight reduction from advanced composite materials; fuel and noise reduction from advanced engines; emissions reductions from improved engine combustors; and fuel consumption and community noise reduction through innovative airframe and engine integration designs.

Green Tech Bears Fruit

TIM speaker Robert Stoker, a senior manager in the Boeing Company’s Environmental Performance Group, iterated results from Boeing’s ecoDemonstrator program, which uses flight testing to accelerate new technologies that can lessen emissions and noise, and improve airlines’ operational efficiency, among other environmental goals.

Proven ecoDemonstrator technologies and processes may be incorporated into existing Boeing production models, made available for in-service fleets, and applied to new airplane-development programs industrywide.

Three NASA experiments were flight tested during the most recent ecoDemonstrator program. Stoker noted two of those studies – one involving creation of smoother, or “laminar” flow across an airplane tail, and the other a series of coatings to prevent the buildup of insect residue on wing surfaces – showed great promise in drag reduction, and decrease in fuel burn and overall emissions. In particular, he praised NASA’s laminar-flow approach as “work[ing] exceptionally well.”

Describing the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Continuous Lower Energy Emissions and Noise Program (CLEEN), FAA CLEEN program manager Levent Ileri and program engineer Arthur Orton charted progress in several technologies worked on collaboratively by the aviation community that will likely be introduced into use by 2026.

These include advanced composite materials structures specifically for entire aircraft fuselages, more efficient wing designs, leading edge protective coatings for turbofan blades to reduce emissions and fuel burn, low-emissions engine combustors, and advanced flight management systems directly integrated with engine controls.

There from Here

Presenters also focused on the need to rethink the future of airplane design from tip to tail. Boeing’s Naveed Hussain suggested the most promising approach could be the blended, or hybrid wing body (HWB) aircraft. He characterized the concept as “a breakthrough in energy efficiency and the operational benefits that accompany it. This is a configuration that, if we look over the tree tops, it looks like an answer.”

In April 2013, a NASA-Boeing project team completed the last of 122 test flights of an 8.5% scale model of the remotely piloted, manta-ray-shaped HWB research aircraft known as the X-48. Studies encompassed six years and the evaluations of three versions: the A, B and C variants.

Although manufacturers have yet to announce any HWB commercial aircraft, Rick Hooker, Skunk Works^® program manager for Lockheed Martin’s HWB project, and Andrew Wick, Lockheed Martin senior aeronautical engineer, said that such designs could be adapted for next-generation military cargo aircraft or refueling tankers. Lockheed has partnered with the U.S Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to develop a next-generation strategic airlifter.

Hooker and Wick cited one Lockheed HWB concept that, if scaled to full size, would weigh 18% less and use 70% less fuel than the C-17, the U.S. Air Force’s current troop/cargo transport workhorse.

Taking a longer look out, aircraft may incorporate a number of design elements inspired by nature. Dr. Sridhar Kota, founder of FlexSys, Inc. said that “flexible, bio-inspired machines are the future of [aeronautical] engineering.” A series of studies conducted at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center have focused on a FlexSys patented design of shape-changing flaps made from composite materials that form continuous bendable surfaces.

The work, begun under the ERA project, is known as the Adaptive Compliant Trailing Edge, or ACTE, experimental flight research project. ACTE is a  joint effort between NASA and the AFRL to determine if advanced flexible trailing-edge wing flaps can both improve aircraft aerodynamic efficiency and reduce airport-area noise generated during takeoffs and landings.

The experiment is being carried out on a modified Gulfstream III (G-III) business aircraft that has been converted into an aerodynamics research test bed, with both of the G-III’s conventional 19-foot-long aluminum flaps replaced by the FlexSys bendable flaps.

If aircraft can eventually mimic bird flight, at least in part, it’s possible they one day could be almost as quiet. TIM presenters cited progress in aircraft noise-reduction improvements that incorporate new design approaches to slats, flaps, engine-nacelle liners and airframe modifications that would quiet sound frequencies by deflection and/or shielding.

Greener Power

Hand-in-hand with noise-reduction research are experiments that aim to significantly decrease fuel use. Even putting aside crucial environmental imperatives, speakers at the TIM noted that the biggest financial outlay for both military and civilian aircraft operators remains the price of fuel. Reducing those costs wouldn’t just help to curtail emissions, but would also boost the bottom line.

Striking improvements to aircraft fuel-burn efficiencies could be in the offing. As Speaker Jack Schirra, manager of materials and process engineering for jet engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, put it, “We’re entering a new era of engine architecture. It’s a new era of propulsion.” In the near term that translates into work on much more efficient designs, including ultra high bypass and geared turbofan engine concepts

A more difficult challenge is fuel itself. The FAA is working to enable U.S. use of one billion gallons per year of “drop-in” sustainable alternative jet fuels by 2018. Though they are created from renewable sources, drop-in fuels mimic the chemistry of petroleum jet fuel and can be used in today’s aircraft and engines without modification, while providing the same levels of performance and safety as today’s petroleum-derived jet fuel.

In studies known as Alternative Fuel Effects on Contrails and Cruise Emissions, or ACCESS, NASA researchers found that a 50-50 blend of kerosene jet fuel (JP-8) and a renewable alternative fuel produced from camelina plant oil performed just as well as an all-JP-8 formulation, while decreasing aircraft particle emissions 50% both on the ground and in the air.

Biodiesel, a fuel comprised of one or more oils made from canola, algae, jatropha, salicornia, palm, and tallow, among others, has the potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 90% over a period of years. And it may prove affordable. According to Boeing’s Robert Stoker, “green diesel” is very close to price parity and, significantly, the nation’s diesel infrastructure already in place could handle ramped-up demand.

Infrastructure capacity is also a serious issue, according to Dr. Jim Hileman, the FAA’s  chief scientist and technical advisor for environment and energy. Producing affordable but more environmentally friendly fuels would require a comprehensive “greenhouse gas accounting,” from extraction, to refinery transport, to fuel refinement, transport to aircraft, and, finally, engine combustion itself. “We need to develop a systems approach that accounts for interdependencies among environmental impacts,” he said.

Tantalizing but tough is the prospect of replacing fossil fuels completely. Hybrid electric propulsion would be an interim step, with onboard battery storage enabling substantial liquid-fuel decreases. Longer-term, distributed electric concepts, including electric-drive technologies, may eventually prove feasible. Flight-weight electrical drives are now possible; but it is fully superconducting electric motors that may, 20 to 30 years hence, make all-electric, large-scale civil transports practical.

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