摘要: |
Over the past fifty years, the main driver for aircraft design was to improve aircraft operational efficiency, which led to converge to an almost universal configuration, which now dominates the commercial airplane market. Given that air traffic is forecasted to more than double in the next twenty years and that both environmental and economical pressure will strongly increase, significant progress will need to be achieved in both improving the efficiency and minimizing the environmental impact of aircraft. This may not no longer be achievable with today's configuration. Designing suitable Novel Aircraft Concepts will require developing capabilities in the complete range of aeronautical disciplines and technologies. NACRE will address these issues, and will take full benefit of the preliminary activities initiated in Europe on Novel Aircraft Concepts in the frame of the FP5 projects ROSAS, VELA & NEFA. The NACRE Integrated Project aims at integrating and validating technologies that will enable new aircraft concepts to be assessed and potentially developed. As such, it will not concentrate on one specific aircraft concept, but is aimed at developing solutions at a generic aircraft component level (cabin, wing, power plant system, fuselage), which will enable the results to be applicable for a range of new aircraft concepts. For each of the major aircraft components, the multidisciplinary investigations will explore the different associated aspects of aerodynamics, materials, structure, engines and systems with the goal of setting the standards in future aircraft design, thus ensuring improved quality and affordability, whilst meeting the tightening environmental constraints (emission and noise), with a vision of global efficiency of the air transport system. |