{"id":278,"date":"2018-05-15T10:36:27","date_gmt":"2018-05-15T10:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horizon.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=278"},"modified":"2018-05-29T23:41:20","modified_gmt":"2018-05-29T23:41:20","slug":"radical-closed-wing-aircraft-design-could-see-greener-skies-take-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/278\/radical-closed-wing-aircraft-design-could-see-greener-skies-take-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Radical closed-wing aircraft design could see greener skies take flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aviation is one of the most environmentally harmful forms of transportation, accounting for 3% of all EU greenhouse gas emissions. But new aircraft designs inspired by the work of an early 20th-century aviation engineer and natural substances such as honeycomb and grass could help to cut the environmental footprint of flying.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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With\u00a0nearly 1 billion passengers taking to European skies<\/a>\u00a0in 2016 and the numbers still increasing, the growth in European aviation has been staggering. The effect is that even as many other industries are reducing\u00a0greenhouse gas\u00a0emissions through efficiency and new technology, aviation\u2019s are on the increase.<\/p>\n

One person flying from London to New York and back generates roughly the same level of emissions as one year\u2019s home heating for the average European.\u00a0At the recent\u00a0Transport Research Arena conference<\/a>\u00a0in Vienna, Austria, a high-level event covering all modes of European transport, Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research\u00a0in Germany, said avoiding air travel completely was the best option for protecting the environment.<\/p>\n

But as Sergio Barbarino, chairman of the Alliance for Logistics Innovation through Collaboration in Europe (ALICE) responded, that\u2019s an unlikely scenario. \u2018We can\u2019t just tell people they can\u2019t take their holidays in the Canary Islands anymore,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

Air travel may be here to stay, but there\u2019s no doubt that engineers need to find new ways to make it cleaner and greener. One idea is to radically redesign an aircraft’s wing so that\u00a0it requires significantly less operational fuel, an approach that’s currently under development by a project called PARSIFAL.<\/p>\n

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‘This solution could completely change the air transport of the future’<\/p>\n

Professor Aldo Frediani,\u00a0 University of Pisa, Italy<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Father of aerodynamics<\/strong><\/p>\n

For their design, the team sought inspiration from the renowned German aviation engineer Ludwig Prandtl, often considered the father of aerodynamics. In 1924, Prandtl had an idea for a plane with an unusual wing that reduced the drag coefficient and improved the aerodynamic efficiency but the idea was largely ignored at the time.<\/p>\n

In the late 1990s, Professor Aldo Frediani of the University of Pisa, Italy, and coordinator of the PARSIFAL project, used mathematics to prove that Prandtl\u2019s wing theory was plausible. Prof. Frediani and his team began to work on the design of a new closed-wing airplane based on Prandtl\u2019s original concept.<\/p>\n

\u2018The theoretical results can be used to define a new configuration, our configuration,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

Instead of two separate wings extending either side of the fuselage, our familiar concept of an airplane, the Prandtl-inspired aircraft has one wing which loops and closes back on itself in a closed-wing design with no wingtips. This reduces the amount of drag acting on the aircraft, meaning that less fuel is burned.\u00a0This is especially important for take-off and landing, as these are the phases of airplane flight that usually guzzle the most fuel and expel most emissions.<\/p>\n

\u2018These aircraft will be much more convenient from the point of view of fuel consumption, noise pollution and emissions,\u2019 said Prof. Frediani.<\/p>\n