MIT designs eco-friendly airplanes

An MIT-led team has designed an environmentally friendly airplane that is estimated to use 70 percent less fuel than current planes, while also reducing noise and release of nitrogen oxides. Led by AeroAstro faculty Ed Greitzer and AeroAstro students, their objective was to develop concepts for, and evaluate the potential of, quieter commercial planes that would burn 70 percent less fuel and emit 75 percent less “NOx” than today’s commercial planes.

The MIT team developed two airplane designs: the 180-passenger D “double bubble” series to replace the Boeing 737 class aircraft, currently used for domestic flights, and the 350 passenger H “hybrid wing body” series to replace the 777 class aircraft now used for international flights.

Lead Designer of the D series, Mark Drela says: “The design mitigates some of the drawbacks by traveling about 10 percent slower than a 737 aircraft. To reduce the drag and amount of fuel that the plane burns, the D series features longer, skinnier wings and a smaller tail. Independently, each tweak might not amount to much, but the little 5-percent changes add up to one big change”. Although the plane would travel slightly slower than a 737, Drela said that some of this time could be recovered because the plane’s wider size should allow for quicker loading and unloading.

The H series, the second aircraft the MIT team designed is very much similar as the D series; a larger design is needed for this plane to carry more passengers over longer distances. The MIT team designed a triangular-shaped hybrid wing body aircraft that blends a wider fuselage with the wings for improved aerodynamics. The large center body creates a forward lift that disposes the need for a tail to balance the aircraft. The large structure also allows engineers to explore different architectures for the plane, such as a distributed system of multiple smaller engines.