Emissions Performance Study for Conventional Aircraft Designs

Abstract

Conventional aircraft designs have been highly successful within commercial passengers transport markets for a very long time, as evident from current fleet of many airlines. However, with the anticipated stricter environmental regulations to be imposed on future flight operations by the related governing bodies, the relevance of conventional aircraft designs to remain competitive has been questioned. On the other hand, some research ventures have been made to pursue revolutionary designs like blended wing body (BWB). This study aims to preliminarily assess the comparison of expected future emission performance between conventional aircraft design and blended wing body design. It addresses the ongoing debate on whether conventional aircraft designs can be expected to be able to cope with impending stricter environmental regulations and/or whether the venture into revolutionary designs is really necessary. Analyses done are largely based on the historical trends of conventional aircraft designs with regards to the lift-to-drag ratio and fuel consumption parameters. As for the blended wing body, its projected emissions performance is based on published data in the literature. The outcome from these analyses solidifies the belief that conventional aircraft designs will face tougher chances to remain operational under new environmental regulations and the search for revolutionary design with better aerodynamic efficiency such as blended wing body is becoming rather necessary.