Two European Union Seventh Framework aeronautics research projects will have a direct bearing on the planned Airbus A320 replacement, which is expected around the middle of the next decade.
The projects, DREAM and MAAXIMUS, take up €65 million ($92.5 million) of the €217 million in EC funding for the 36 selected projects.
Goals of the 60-month, 60-partner MAAXIMUS project include advancing simulation-based composite airframe design, improving manufacturing technology, and achieving a reduction of 10% in structural weight and 20% in development lead time, all by 2012.
Led by Airbus, MAAXIMUS will develop a virtual structure platform and use massively parallel computing to create accurate structural behaviour models containing 100 million degrees of freedom instead of today's one million.
The team will also construct a composite fuselage to investigate metal-coated carbon fibres for electromagnetic protection and improvements in material strength of up to 12%.
DREAM, a three-year project led by Rolls-Royce (R-R), will investigate open-rotor engines and new fuels to reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions while meeting acceptable noise levels.
The project will focus on contra-rotating open rotors with variable-pitch blades. These promise a 10-15% reduction in fuel burn, but are noisier than high-bypass turbofans.
"Open rotors could replace today's turbofans, but some kinds could be very noisy. We need to check if we can produce an engine with no noise penalty," says Serge Eury, DREAM partner Snecma's research and technology vice-president.
Snecma will lead work on a direct-drive open rotor, while R-R will study a geared solution.
The fuels work will study synthetic kerosene produced using the Fischer-Tropsch process as well as biofuel candidates suitable for use in aircraft.
Source: FlightGlobal.com
