CHRISTINA MACKENZIE / BRUSSELS
Environment concerns will stunt Europe's air transport development unless the EU spends $100 billion on green measures, says a study
Civil aeronautics research in Europe is focusing on ensuring air transport growth is sustainable and not limited by aircraft noise and emissions. The Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe (ACARE), which was founded a year ago, has published a strategic research agenda (SRA) calling for up to €100 billion ($100 billion) to be spent in the next 20 years on research into making air travel safer, cleaner, quieter, more affordable and more secure.
The SRA is targeting a 50% reduction in noise, fuel consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and an 80% cut in nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions. It recommends that research to cut CO2 emissions be concentrated on aerodynamics, weight reduction and improved configurations. Novel ideas such as the flying wing and alternative aircraft fuels such as hydrogen should also be studied, says the SRA.
In parallel, the European Union (EU) is increasing spending to help the aerospace sector meet the SRA targets and ensure the industry remains globally competitive. "By investing more money more wisely in research, European aeronautics can simultaneously respond to society's needs and achieve global leadership," says EU research commissioner Philippe Busquin.
Research priority
The European Commission (EC) will spend €1.07 billion on aerospace (of which €750 million will be allocated to aeronautics) over the next four years under its 6th Framework Programme (FP6), beginning on 1 January. The priority, says the EC, is to co-ordinate private and public sector investment to "develop a genuine European aeronautics industry". It says this is vital "if the EU is to avoid a return to the 1970s and an overwhelming US domination of the crucial medium- and long-haul markets". The EC adds: "The US federal government allocates twice as much to civilian aeronautics research as the EU - and that is not including R&D for the military sector, where US expenditure is 14 times that of Europe."
Busquin says: "We have received several ideas for aeronautics research topics and this highlights that parties are keen to pool resources to launch integrated projects and networks of excellence in this field." The EC knows companies are keen to pool knowledge upstream rather than in areas close to final product development that are market-sensitive. So it will fund a maximum of only 50% of the costs of research where industry is involved, but up to 100% for universities and research centres.
The EC's actions under FP6 will concentrate on three major areas, one of which is reducing the environmental impact of aviation. The other two are: increasing the competitiveness of the European industry in producing civil aircraft, engines and equipment; and increasing the capacity and safety of the air transport system, in support of a "single European sky". The environmental objective of FP6 is to meet the goals set at the Kyoto conference on climate change and compensate for future air traffic increases, more specifically cutting emissions to the levels targeted by the SRA and reducing airport noise by 4-5EPNdB (effective perceived noise) per aircraft operation in the short term, and 10EPNdB in the long term.
To achieve emissions cuts, the EU will favour research on low-emission combustion and propulsion concepts, engine technologies and related control systems, low-drag aerodynamic concepts, low-weight airframe structures, and high-temperature materials, as well as improved flight operational procedures. To achieve noise reductions, work must be focused on powerplant technologies, aeroacoustics for airframe noise reduction, advanced noise-control systems and novel operational procedures near airports.
"Only about one in five research projects submitted is approved, and the ratio is even lower than that in certain sectors," says the EC. The projects are not chosen by the Commission, but by external experts. To ensure small and medium-sized enterprises can take part in the research projects as far upstream as possible, AeroSME, a joint project of the EC and European industry association AECMA, organised a workshop just before the launch of FP6. The industry's big players presented 10 project plans they envisaged submitting under the first FP6 call for proposals, which is happening now. In all cases, the company presenting the project is the team co-ordinator, not the sole participant.
Friendly helicopter
Of these, some are aimed directly at producing more environmentally responsible aircraft. AgustaWestland and Eurocopter, for example, have a project entitled "the environmentally friendly helicopter including turboshaft engines", nicknamed the "Friendcopter". They aim to work on noise abatement flight procedures and quiet engine installations to bring external noise levels 10dB below current European and international rules. Impulsive noise emission, rotor power consumption and cabin vibration will be addressed by active blade control, and noise in the cabin will be tackled using active structure control.
Dassault Aviation has a project addressing the problems of the sonic boom, overall noise, fuel consumption and emissions of supersonic aircraft, and notes that the long-term investment needed to develop an environmentally-friendly supersonic aircraft "can be achieved only at the European level". Dassault says European industry is considering two projects - a supersonic business jet for eight to 12 passengers with a cruise speed of Mach 1.6 to 1.8, and a commercial aircraft for 200-250 passengers with a cruise speed of about M2. Both would need a sonic boom weak enough to enable operations over land.
Thales Avionics is seeking EU funding to help develop and validate new methods for take-off, approach and landing (including steep/curved approaches and parallel runways), which would improve aircraft operation, reducing fuel burn and alleviating bottlenecks at airports, at the same time addressing the noise issue.
None of these projects is likely to start until 2004, if at all, given the lengthy approval process. But this does not mean EU-funded R&D in aerospace is taking a break between the 5th Framework Programme (FP5) and FP6, because many projects from FP5 are still under way and will overlap with FP6.
One major project (known as a "technology platform" in EU-speak) that is still active and on target to meet its objectives is the Efficient and Environmentally Friendly Aero Engine (EEFAE), which has involved all the major European engine companies, a number of suppliers, universities and research establishments in a 19-partner, four-year project within FP5. The EU has met 50% of the development costs up to demonstrator level with two engines in this €101 million project.
The objectives are to reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by 12-20%, NOx emissions by 60-80% and ownership costs by 20-30%, improve reliability by 60% and cut life-cycle costs by 30%. Rolls-Royce is piloting development of one of the demonstrator engines, ANTLE (Affordable Near Term Low-Emissions) engine, which is intended to cut NOx emissions by 60%. ANTLE has a single annular combustor with lean pre-mixed combustion that should be available in new aero engines entering service from 2008.
Snecma, MTU Aero Engines and FiatAvio are co-ordinating development of the second demonstrator engine, CLEAN (Component Validation for Low Emission Aero Engine), designed to reduce NOx emissions by 80%. It has a double annular combustor with lean pre-mixed pre-vapouriser and could be in service powering aircraft the size of an Airbus A320 or Boeing 737 between 2010 and 2015.
The second major FP5 project in the aeronautical sector, this time addressing noise, is Silencer (Significantly Lower Community Exposure to Aircraft Noise), involving 45 partners co-ordinated by Snecma. This 48-month, €110 million project, 50% paid for by the EU, has three major objectives: large-scale validation of noise reduction technologies; assessment of the applicability of these technologies to current and future European products with minimum cost, weight and performance penalties; and determination of the noise reduction possible through realistic exploitation of validated technologies.
Some of the concepts to be validated include low-noise fans and low-pressure turbines, scarfed and novel intakes, bypass and hot-stream liners, nozzle jet-noise suppressors, active noise control and airframe noise reduction technologies. Tests will be conducted statically on three aero-engines, in flight on two aircraft and on a number of large-scale component rigs. Silencer will also include a thorough noise evaluation on the two EEFAE engines.
Critical technologies
In more upstream research to help develop critical technologies within FP5, a series of projects make up the Low Emission Contributor Technology (LECT ) "cluster" and another series make up the X-Noise 2 "cluster", the first meeting for which was held in November.
Among these projects is AERO2K, co-ordinated by UK research firm Qinetiq with partners including EADS and Eurocontrol, addressing the problem of outdated tools to measure aircraft emissions. The expected result of this €1.67 million, 36-month project is up-to-date aircraft emissions and forecast databases "that will be used worldwide by policy-makers and scientists when assessing the impact of aircraft emissions on climate change", says the EC.
A similar project, JEAN (Jet Exhaust Aerodynamics and Noise), has €2.22 million and 36 months in which to develop and validate a numerical technique to predict the noise generated by a jet with an accuracy of 3dB across the frequency range 50Hz to 10,000Hz. The project is being co-ordinated by Trinity College Dublin with partners including Dassault, Rolls-Royce, Snecma, Volvo Aero, and several European universities and research centres.
Source: Flight International