Subsonic Civil Transport Aircraft for a 2035 Time Frame: An Industry-NASA-University Collaborative Enterprise

 

Abstract:

Aircraft and aeroengine design and development are inherently multidisciplinary and span organizational boundaries. For academia, as for industry, collaboration between individuals and between groups is critical in advancing technology in these fields. This lecture will describe one such collaborative enterprise, which brought together complementary skills of industry, government, and university to team in the conceptual design of new aircraft configurations with step changes in performance. The project work scope combined experiments, computations, and analyses; the specific aircraft was the ‘double-bubble’, D8 civil transport, aimed at the 2035 time frame. We first introduce the rationale for the conceptual design, carried out under Phase 1 of the NASA N+3 Program and estimated to yield a 70 per cent reduction in fuel burn, including explanation of the physical effects that lead to this dramatic change. We then describe the two major goals of the Phase 2 project: assessment of the propulsion-airframe integration, and benefits, associated with ingestion of the aircraft boundary layer in the D8 configuration, and definition of the new engine technology that is needed. To illustrate this assessment we present performance, flow field results, and overall learnings from back-to-back experimental comparisons and computations of 1:11 scale powered aircraft models, with and without boundary layer ingestion, in the NASA Langley 14 x 22 foot Subsonic Wind Tunnel.

 

Biography:

Edward M. Greitzer is the H. N. Slater Professor, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, MIT, where he has been Director, Gas Turbine Laboratory, Deputy Head, and Interim Department Head. He received BA, SM and PhD degrees from Harvard University. Prior to joining MIT he was with United Technologies Corporation (UTC), at Pratt & Whitney, and, more recently, on leave from MIT, Director, Aeromechanical, Chemical, and Fluid Systems at UTRC. His research includes gas turbines, turbomachinery, propulsion system-airframe integration, active control of fluid systems, vortex flows, and industry-university collaboration. He was the MIT lead on the Cambridge-MIT Silent Aircraft Initiative, the Principal Investigator for the NASA sponsored D8 “double-bubble” aircraft project, and the MIT Founding Head of the Engineering Product Development Pillar at Singapore University of Technology and Design, a new university developed collaboratively by MIT and Singapore.

Dr. Greitzer is a four-time recipient of the ASME Gas Turbine Award and a recipient of the ASME Freeman Scholar Award in Fluids Engineering, the International Gas Turbine Institute (IGTI) Scholar Award, and other publication awards from AIAA and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He has received the IGTI Aircraft Engine Technology Award, the Air Force Exceptional Civilian Service Award, the AIAA Reed Aeronautics Award, the ASME R. Tom Sawyer Award, MIT’s Everett Moore Baker Award for undergraduate teaching, and (twice) his departmental undergraduate teaching award. He is lead author of the book Internal Flow: Concepts and Applications (Cambridge University Press). Dr. Greitzer has been a Visiting Fellow of the Japan Society for Promotion of Science, twice an Overseas Fellow at Cambridge University and is an AIAA Honorary Fellow, an ASME Fellow, a National Academy of Engineering member, an Honorary Professor, Beihang University, and an International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.