MIT Energy Efficient Aircraft Design Unveiled

US researchers have unveiled a pair of pioneering new aircraft designs that, they say, could reduce aviation fuel consumption by up to 70 per cent and produce comparable drops in related noise and air pollution levels, too.

Based at MIT – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - the researchers have put forward their ideas to NASA as part of a package focusing on future environmental aircraft designs.

New Green Aircraft

MIT’s brief was to come up with new green aircraft concepts based on the following criteria:

• The aircraft must be 70 per cent more fuel efficient than current, in-service commercial airliners
• The aircraft must produce 75 per cent less Nitrogen Oxide and Nitrogen Dioxide than current, in-service commercial airliners
• Finally, the aircraft must have a better short-field performance, too

Of the two designs submitted, one is for a new commercial airliner capable of accommodating 180 people. This capacity marks it out as a possible replacement for the likes of the Boeing 737 family of twin-engined airliners and other similarly-sized types. The other is a possible Boeing 777 replacement and – with a 350-passenger capacity – is much larger.

Energy Efficient Aircraft

The smaller aircraft design features a “double-bubble” fuselage arrangement, with two cylindrical structures sat side-by-side. It also relocates the engines from their traditional under-wing site to the back of the fuselage.

Positioned there, the engines are exposed to slower-moving air than further up the aircraft structure and, as a result, fuel consumption is lowered, but performance maintained. The energy efficiency of this aircraft is also boosted by other aspects of its design including thin wings.

‘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 per cent fuel-burn reduction, and a version that could be built with conventional aluminum and current jet technology that would burn 50 per cent less fuel and might be more attractive as a lower risk, near-term alternative’, MIT stated in an online press release.

The other aircraft is known as the ‘H’ model and this incorporates a hybrid fuselage-to-wing shape as a means of achieving a boost in aerodynamic flow, along with the thin wings and rear-mounted engines of the D series.

Now that NASA has the designs, the next stage in these projects’ development will occur if/when the administration selects either or both for future progression.

Enviro News will present further coverage of these new environmentally friendly aircraft designs as future facts emerge.

Image kindly provided by and copyright of MIT/Aurora Flight Sciences

See also:

MIT Developing Quick-Recharge Electric Car Tech