Dorian Colas, Dr. Elena De la Rosa Blanco, (former students: Leo Ng, Phil Weed)
Advisor: Prof. Spakovszky
Reducing the environmental impact of air travel is a major impetus to current research in aeronautics. A potential configuration that could enable step changes in fuel consumption, noise and emissions is a hybrid wing-body aircraft where a lifting fuselage is blended with the wings. Building on previous work from the Silent Aircraft Initiative, this project aims to develop a set of advanced predictive methods that will enable the design of a hybrid wing-body aircraft to meet NASA’s N+2 goals: (i) 25% less fuel burn, (ii) 80% less emissions, and (iii) 52 dB less noise compared to current aircrafts in service. MIT, in collaboration with Boeing, NASA, and UC Irvine, is defining the aircraft configuration and propulsion system to meet such goals.
One approach reducing propulsion system noise is to mount the engines above the airframe, utilizing the large planform area to shield the noise generated by the turbomachinery. A fast algorithm of medium-fidelity was developed based on Kirchoff’s diffraction theory to compute the shielding effect of the airframe using directivity compact sources. The method includes flight effects and is applicable to any kind of aircraft configuration.
An alternative configuration uses engines embedded in the airframe where the airframe boundary layer is ingested by a distributed propulsion system. In such configurations thrust and drag cannot be simply separated and instead the overall aircraft performance is assessed using a previously established power balance analysis. The design of an S-shaped inlet and distortion tolerant fan stage is also being pursued.
The approach is based on high-fidelity simulations of the coupled airframe, inlet and fan system using a body force based representation of the fan stage. Various design concepts will be explored with the goal to improve power savings and to mitigate inlet flow distortion and fan performance penalties.
Advisor: Prof. Spakovszky
Reducing the environmental impact of air travel is a major impetus to current research in aeronautics. A potential configuration that could enable step changes in fuel consumption, noise and emissions is a hybrid wing-body aircraft where a lifting fuselage is blended with the wings. Building on previous work from the Silent Aircraft Initiative, this project aims to develop a set of advanced predictive methods that will enable the design of a hybrid wing-body aircraft to meet NASA’s N+2 goals: (i) 25% less fuel burn, (ii) 80% less emissions, and (iii) 52 dB less noise compared to current aircrafts in service. MIT, in collaboration with Boeing, NASA, and UC Irvine, is defining the aircraft configuration and propulsion system to meet such goals.
One approach reducing propulsion system noise is to mount the engines above the airframe, utilizing the large planform area to shield the noise generated by the turbomachinery. A fast algorithm of medium-fidelity was developed based on Kirchoff’s diffraction theory to compute the shielding effect of the airframe using directivity compact sources. The method includes flight effects and is applicable to any kind of aircraft configuration.
An alternative configuration uses engines embedded in the airframe where the airframe boundary layer is ingested by a distributed propulsion system. In such configurations thrust and drag cannot be simply separated and instead the overall aircraft performance is assessed using a previously established power balance analysis. The design of an S-shaped inlet and distortion tolerant fan stage is also being pursued.
The approach is based on high-fidelity simulations of the coupled airframe, inlet and fan system using a body force based representation of the fan stage. Various design concepts will be explored with the goal to improve power savings and to mitigate inlet flow distortion and fan performance penalties.
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