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Zheming Zhang
Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
Washington University in St. Louis
Advisor: Dr. Ramesh K. Agarwal
Abstract
Ian Poll has shown that the ratio of the energy liberated during a flight to the revenue work done (ETRW = MMF.LCV/Mp.g.R) of an airplane can be employed as a key indicator to assess its environmental impact, where MMF = weight of the fuel used in a flight mission, LCV = fuel lower calorific value, Mp = payload mass, R = great circle distance flown and g = acceleration due gravity. ETRW remains constant during the life cycle of the aircraft and is fixed by its designers. The goal of an environmentally optimum airplane is to minimize the ETRW. For an existing airplane therefore, there are two parameters that can affect the ETRW, the ratio of actual payload to maximum possible payload "c" and the range R. The goal of this paper is to study the effect of c and R on ETRW and minimize it by using a genetic algorithm. The study is performed on a Boeing 737-800 and a Boeing 747-400 aircraft. The optimization study is valuable in determining the payload and range of an existing aircraft for minimal environmental impact; these are not the maximum possible values. For new aircraft designs, the minimization of ETRW should account for advances in materials, alternative fuels, structures, aerodynamics and propulsion technologies, which can be taken into consideration at design stage. It should be noted that other factors which also affect the emissions, namely the aircraft operations and air traffic management are not included in the ETRW.
Zheming Zhang is a PhD student in the department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Washington University in St. Louis. He is working on his doctoral dissertation in the area of "CO2 Sequestration in Saline Aquifers". |
