NASA has developed and refined green technologies which it says could save US commercial airlines more than USD 250 billion in future by reducing fuel consumption to half.
These new technologies, developed under the purview of NASA's Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) project over the past six years, could cut airline fuel use in half, pollution by 75 per cent and noise to nearly one-eighth of today's levels, NASA said.
"If these technologies start finding their way into the airline fleet, our computer models show the economic impact could amount to USD 255 billion in operational savings between 2025 and 2050," said Jaiwon Shin, NASA's associate administrator for aeronautics research.
Created in 2009 and completed in 2015, ERA's mission was to explore and document the feasibility, benefits and technical risk of inventive vehicle concepts and enabling technologies that would reduce aviation's impact on the environment.
Project researchers focused on eight major integrated technology demonstrations falling into three categories - airframe technology, propulsion technology and vehicle systems integration.
According to the researchers, tiny embedded nozzles blowing air over the surface of an airplane's vertical tail fin showed that future aircraft could safely be designed with smaller tails, reducing weight and drag.
The technology was tested using Boeing's ecoDemonstrator 757 flying laboratory. Also flown was a test of surface coatings designed to minimise drag caused by bug residue building up on the wing's leading edge.
NASA also developed a new process for stitching together large sections of lightweight composite materials to create damage-tolerant structures that could be used in building uniquely shaped future aircraft that weighed as much as 20 per cent less than a similar all-metal aircraft.
Teaming with the US Air Force Research Laboratory, NASA successfully tested a radical new morphing wing technology that allows an aircraft to seamlessly extend its flaps, leaving no drag-inducing, noise-enhancing gaps for air to flow through.
NASA also worked with General Electric to refine the design of the compressor stage of a turbine engine to improve its aerodynamic efficiency and, after testing, realised that future engines employing this technology could save 2.5 per cent in fuel burn.
The space agency worked with Pratt and Whitney on the company's geared turbofan jet engine to mature an advanced fan design to improve propulsion efficiency and reduce noise.
If introduced on the next-generation engine, the technology could reduce fuel burn by 15 per cent and significantly reduce noise, the US space agency said.
The team also worked on an improved design for a jet engine combustor, the chamber in which fuel is burned, in an attempt to reduce the amount of nitrogen oxides produced.
