2 Purdue AAE student teams place in NASA-sponsored Green Aviation University Contest

Event Date: July 22, 2011
Student teams from the Spring 2011 AAE 451 Aircraft Design course taught by Professor Crossley had the option of submitting a report from their work to NASA's Environmentally Responsible (Green) Aviation College Student Challenge that invited students to propose ideas and designs for future aircraft that use less fuel, produce less harmful emissions, and make less noise. Teams from the course placed second and tied for third place in the contest that was open to entrants from US and international colleges and universities.

Student teams from the Spring 2011 AAE 451 Aircraft Design course taught by Professor Crossley had the option of submitting a report from their work to NASAs Environmentally Responsible (Green) Aviation College Student Challenge that invited students to propose ideas and designs for future aircraft that use less fuel, produce less harmful emissions, and make less noise. Teams from the course placed second and tied for third place in the contest that was open to entrants from US and international colleges and universities.

The NASA contest discussion stated that the students were to write a technical paper that describes the design of a future large commercial airliner (200 passenger minimum) that simultaneously addresses all of the N+2 goals for noise, emissions and fuel burn and might enter service around 2025 to 2030. During the Spring 2011 semester, the student teams used these guidelines to develop design requirements, generate concepts, identify advanced technologies for consideration, conducting sizing and trade studies, and finally select and describe their preferred concept, including comparisons to current technology aircraft.

“Team Paradigm” consisting of Steve McCabe, Steven Adams, Paul Davis, Zack Means, Mizuki Wada, Zherui Guo, Farah Abdullah, Askar Yessurkepov and Noor Emir Anuar earned second place for their entry and will share a prize of $3,500. Their aircraft concept “P6CAF-IncAR” would carry 256 passengers on a design mission of 6500 nmi with a gross takeoff weight of 249,000 pounds. The team predicted that their choice of advanced technologies and configuration would consume 0.049 pounds of fuel per seat mile (roughly 50% of today’s 777-200ER), and would have a cumulative community noise metric of 246 dB (42 dB below Stage 4 requirements) and would generate 8.94 kg of nitrogen oxides (NOx) during the landing and takeoff cycle.

For more information on this, please see NASA's webpage http://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/2011-ERAProject.html

 

Team Paradigm's "P6CAF-IncAR" Concept
“Team Employable” consisting of Laura Managan, Michael Yankel, Nick Stallings, Tim Luckey, Alan Pomp, Katie Vollmayer, Brian Hartel, Ashley Prather, and Aamod Samuel, tied for third place with their entry and will share an award of $2,500. Team Employable’s 224-seat “Night Panther” concept has a design range of 3,200 nmi and a gross takeoff weight of 183,000 pounds. For this concept, the team predicted a fuel consumption of 0.051 lb/seat-nmi (about 44% below a 737-900), a cumulative noise metric of 231 dB (42 dB below Stage 4 limits), and landing and takeoff cycle emissions of nitrogen oxides equivalent to 21.8 g / kN thrust (nearly 77% below the CAEP/6 standards for NOx).

Team Employable's Night Panther Concept
NASA personnel evaluated all submitted reports against a standard set of criteria including: creativity and innovation, literature review, baseline comparison with current technology, cost and feasibility analysis, and point by point design discussion. First place in the competition went to a team from the University of Virginia, and a team from Georgia Tech shared third place with Purdue’s Team Employable.