Approaches to Representing Aircraft Fuel Efficiency Performance for the Purpose of a Commercial Aircraft Certification Standard

Increasing concern over the potential harmful effects of green house gas emissions from various sources has motivated the consideration of an aircraft certification standard as one way to reduce aircraft CO2 emissions and mitigate aviation impacts on the climate. In order to develop a commercial air...

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Main Authors: Yutko, Brian, Hansman, R. John
Format: Technical Report
Language:en_US
Published: 2011
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/64685
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author Yutko, Brian
Hansman, R. John
author_facet Yutko, Brian
Hansman, R. John
author_sort Yutko, Brian
collection MIT
description Increasing concern over the potential harmful effects of green house gas emissions from various sources has motivated the consideration of an aircraft certification standard as one way to reduce aircraft CO2 emissions and mitigate aviation impacts on the climate. In order to develop a commercial aircraft certification standard, a fuel efficiency performance metric and the condition at which it is evaluated must be determined. The fuel efficiency metric form of interest to this research is fuel/range, where fuel and range can either be evaluated over the course of a reference mission or at a single, instantaneous point. A mission-­‐based metric encompasses all phases of flight and is robust to changes in technology; however, definition of the reference mission requires many assumptions and is cumbersome for both manufacturers and regulators. An instantaneous metric based on fundamental aircraft parameters measures the fuel efficiency performance of the aircraft at a single point, greatly reducing the complexity of the standard and certification process; however, a single point might not be robust to future changes in aircraft technology. In this thesis, typical aircraft operations are assessed in order to develop evaluation assumptions for a mission-­‐based metric, Block Fuel divided by Range (BF/R), and an instantaneous metric, incremental fuel burn per incremental distance (inverse Specific Air Range (1/SAR)). Operating patterns and fuel burn maps are used to demonstrate the importance of mission range on fleet fuel burn, and thus the importance of a properly defined range evaluation condition for BF/R. An evaluation condition of 40% of the range at Maximum Structural Payload (MSP) limited by Maximum Takeoff Weight (MTOW) is determined to be representative for the mission-­‐based metric. A potential evaluation condition for 1/SAR is determined to be optimal speed and altitude for a representative mid-­‐cruise weight defined by half of the difference between MTOW and Maximum Zero Fuel Weight (MZFW). To demonstrate suitability as a potential surrogate for BF/R, correlation of 1/SAR with BF/R is shown for the current fleet, and a case study of potential future aircraft technologies is presented to show the correlation of improvements in the 1/SAR metric with improvements in BF/R.
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spelling mit-1721.1/646852019-04-12T20:57:13Z Approaches to Representing Aircraft Fuel Efficiency Performance for the Purpose of a Commercial Aircraft Certification Standard Yutko, Brian Hansman, R. John green house gas emissions certification standard fuel efficiency air transportaion Increasing concern over the potential harmful effects of green house gas emissions from various sources has motivated the consideration of an aircraft certification standard as one way to reduce aircraft CO2 emissions and mitigate aviation impacts on the climate. In order to develop a commercial aircraft certification standard, a fuel efficiency performance metric and the condition at which it is evaluated must be determined. The fuel efficiency metric form of interest to this research is fuel/range, where fuel and range can either be evaluated over the course of a reference mission or at a single, instantaneous point. A mission-­‐based metric encompasses all phases of flight and is robust to changes in technology; however, definition of the reference mission requires many assumptions and is cumbersome for both manufacturers and regulators. An instantaneous metric based on fundamental aircraft parameters measures the fuel efficiency performance of the aircraft at a single point, greatly reducing the complexity of the standard and certification process; however, a single point might not be robust to future changes in aircraft technology. In this thesis, typical aircraft operations are assessed in order to develop evaluation assumptions for a mission-­‐based metric, Block Fuel divided by Range (BF/R), and an instantaneous metric, incremental fuel burn per incremental distance (inverse Specific Air Range (1/SAR)). Operating patterns and fuel burn maps are used to demonstrate the importance of mission range on fleet fuel burn, and thus the importance of a properly defined range evaluation condition for BF/R. An evaluation condition of 40% of the range at Maximum Structural Payload (MSP) limited by Maximum Takeoff Weight (MTOW) is determined to be representative for the mission-­‐based metric. A potential evaluation condition for 1/SAR is determined to be optimal speed and altitude for a representative mid-­‐cruise weight defined by half of the difference between MTOW and Maximum Zero Fuel Weight (MZFW). To demonstrate suitability as a potential surrogate for BF/R, correlation of 1/SAR with BF/R is shown for the current fleet, and a case study of potential future aircraft technologies is presented to show the correlation of improvements in the 1/SAR metric with improvements in BF/R. Thanks to my sponsors at the FAA and EPA. 2011-06-27T20:58:54Z 2011-06-27T20:58:54Z 2011-06-27 Technical Report http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/64685 en_US ICAT;2011-5 An error occurred on the license name. An error occurred getting the license - uri. application/pdf
spellingShingle green house gas emissions
certification standard
fuel efficiency
air transportaion
Yutko, Brian
Hansman, R. John
Approaches to Representing Aircraft Fuel Efficiency Performance for the Purpose of a Commercial Aircraft Certification Standard
title Approaches to Representing Aircraft Fuel Efficiency Performance for the Purpose of a Commercial Aircraft Certification Standard
title_full Approaches to Representing Aircraft Fuel Efficiency Performance for the Purpose of a Commercial Aircraft Certification Standard
title_fullStr Approaches to Representing Aircraft Fuel Efficiency Performance for the Purpose of a Commercial Aircraft Certification Standard
title_full_unstemmed Approaches to Representing Aircraft Fuel Efficiency Performance for the Purpose of a Commercial Aircraft Certification Standard
title_short Approaches to Representing Aircraft Fuel Efficiency Performance for the Purpose of a Commercial Aircraft Certification Standard
title_sort approaches to representing aircraft fuel efficiency performance for the purpose of a commercial aircraft certification standard
topic green house gas emissions
certification standard
fuel efficiency
air transportaion
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/64685
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