Today, there is increasing discussion and research on how to improve the efficiency of aircraft engines to reduce consumption and carbon emissions.
That’s why the industry is exploring a range of new avenues to address the challenge, testing new fuels, deg new engine architectures and exploring electrification. Allen Paxson, vice president of commercial strategy for the future of flight at GE Aerospace, is particularly excited about the open fan architecture, an evolution of which is finally on its way to commercialization. “Open fan technology is nothing new,” says Paxson. “But over the past 10 to 15 years, we’ve cracked some of the technologies that will enable open fans to be as fast as a jet, quiet and 20 percent more efficient than today’s engines.”
Open Fan ditches the traditional cladding around jet engines. “That would be a huge step change in propulsive efficiency,” Paxson explained, adding, “Today, we’re really upping our game and trying to be revolutionary and looking for much more step changes in efficiencies.”
Paxson and other industry leaders were on stage in Brussels last month for a conference, “Adopting Technologies to Fly Net Zero by 2050.” Also participating in the discussion were Axel Krein, executive director of the Clean Aviation t Undertaking, Ourania Georgoutsakou, managing director of Airlines for Europe, and Filip Cornelis, director of aviation at the European Commission’s DG MOVE board. Prompted by Jan Cienski, senior editor at Politico, the acknowledged that the challenges of transforming aviation are unique because safety itself is the highest calling, and that lengthens the product development cycle. “You can’t just touch a cloud when you’re flying an airplane,” Paxson said. “We don’t compete on safety.”
While research and development of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) and hybrid electric propulsion systems are essential and ongoing for the future of flight, Paxson noted that materials science and other engineering advances — put to work in the company’s GEnx, GE9X and CFM LEAP engine programs — have already delivered 10% to 15% savings in fuel use and carbon emissions for today’s commercial jet aircraft compared to their predecessors. These three engines integrate advanced composite materials as well as additively manufactured components that were key to this achievement.
“So right away, you get almost a 15 percent improvement in the new aircraft over the aircraft that are in service, or even higher in some cases with some of the older vintages out there,” Paxson said. “Those are big step changes just with the new equipment deliveries.” Given that about three-quarters of all flights today are powered by an engine made by GE Aerospace or one of its partners, he noted, that’s a big deal. “We feel a responsibility to develop the technology for better, more efficient aviation.”
Open Fan opens up new possibilities
Could the Open Fan be one of the solutions that truly moves the industry forward? GE Aerospace is determined to answer that question affirmatively. The RISE program, a development project of CFM International — a 50/50 t venture between GE Aerospace and ’s Safran Aircraft Engines — is maturing a suite of pioneering technologies, including advanced engine architectures such as the Open Fan, a compact core (which GE Aerospace is developing through NASA’s Hybrid Thermally Efficient Core program) and hybrid electric power systems.
“The real challenges” with Open Fan, Paxson said, “are noise. That’s what’s been the breakthrough over the last 10 years. That really got us excited.” GE Aerospace used the computing power available on Frontier, the world’s fastest supercomputer, housed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to simulate air movement inside a full-scale Open Fan engine under flight conditions. In the evolution of the Open Fan architecture, this capability has provided real-world solutions to the problems of turbulence and noise levels.
The European Union is also helping to the development of the Open Fan through the Clean Aviation Programme, which has an overall technology development budget of €4,1 billion over seven years. Krein, from the Clean Aviation t Undertaking, said the new engine design is among the technologies receiving the most attention from the consortium, across the three main areas the EU public-private partnership is exploring: ultra-efficient regional aircraft, ultra-efficient short- and medium-range aircraft and hydrogen-powered aircraft. He explained that the t venture’s focus is on developing and demonstrating technologies that lead to a minimum 30% increase in aircraft-level efficiency for new aircraft with a range below 4.000 kilometres. When it comes to hydrogen, Krein cited the hydrogen engine concept and the fuel cell solution, in which hydrogen is carried on board the aircraft in liquid form to produce electricity to power an aircraft.
Staying competitive while pursuing transformation
The aviation sector is essential to Europe’s industrial sector and requires constant updating and modernisation to ensure competitiveness not only at home but in the global economy. “We need to have network airlines in Europe. It’s our industrial fabric. It’s important to serve our economy more broadly and of course there are a lot of jobs. Aviation is a strategic sector in of defence and civil protection, so we need to protect them and ensure that these network airlines are competitive,” said Cornelis, from the EU’s DG MOVE board. But the sector doesn’t just serve Europe’s domestic needs. Aviation is essential to the region’s position on the world stage. “It’s a high-tech sector and it’s one of the sectors where we still lead the world. Together with the US, we are leading the world in aircraft technology, engines and air traffic management systems. And if we want to continue to do so, we have to invest.”
Georgoutsakou of Airlines for Europe, whose member airline CEOs have written an open letter to European governments arguing that sustainability and competitiveness goals need to be on an equal footing, said: “If we don’t ensure that European airlines remain competitive, that within Europe we can remain connected, then we will really lose something.” When it comes to the development of technology itself, she said: “There is no single silver bullet to decarbonise aviation. It’s always a combination of many things. The two biggest contributors are SAF and aircraft and engine technology. The third part is better airspace management, and that includes technology that would make our skies a little bit smarter.”
When it comes to technology development, no matter how competitive the playing field, the goals of sustainability and safety remain the same. “Common standards need to be applied,” Paxson said. “This is a global industry, and we want this unification of these technologies. We’re really proud of that at GE Aerospace. We have 52.000 people working at GE Aerospace right now — 12.500 of them work here in Europe, deg, servicing or manufacturing our products. It’s really important that we think globally about trying to solve this problem. All the brightest minds can come together.”
Via GE Aerospace
Read also
