The Project “Parsifal”: Prandtlplane Architecture For The Sustainable Improvement Of Future Airplanes

Abstract

The activities reported in this paper are part of the project “PARSIFAL” (Prandtlplane ARchitecture for the Sustainable Improvement of Future AirpLanes), funded by the European Community under the Horizon 2020 program and coordinated by the University of Pisa (Italy); the other partners of the project are: Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands), ONERA (France), Arts et Métiers ParisTech-ENSAM (France), DLR (Germany) and SkyBox Engineering (Italy). The paper presents a summary of preliminary design activities, carried out with the project PARSIFAL in order to study the introduction of box-wing aircraft, known as “PrandtlPlane”, in the air transport system. PARSIFAL aims to investigate the adoption of the PrandtlPlane over short-to-medium routes, where aircraft compliant with the ICAO Aerodrome Reference Code “C” operate. According to such ICAO standard, the PrandtlPlane developed in PARSIFAL has a wingspan limited to 36m but, if compared to reference aircraft such as B737 and A320 families aircraft, it can improve the passenger capacity from about 200 to more than 300 units. This paper presents the design steps performed for the definition of a “baseline configuration” of the PrP, introducing the requirements and describing both the conceptual and preliminary design phases, including the high fidelity investigations CFD and FEM analyses.