A current challenge regarding aviation is to satisfy society's need for mobility and at the same time take care of environmental impacts caused by air transport. For this purpose, the interdisciplinary research project Energy System Transformation in Aviation, guided by Prof. Jens Friedrichs, was established. It aims at reducing CO2 - and NOx - emissions, decreasing noise pollution and ensuring recycling capability of air transport systems. Moreover the development of an adjusted air transportation management makes up an important issue of the project.
Beyond the information provided on this page, detailed descriptions of the projects aims, goals, concepts and approaches, you will find here.
In order to pave the way towards emission-free air traffic, the project aims at an integration of future air transportation into a circulatory energy system economy. Regarding this, especially different aspects of long, medium and short range missions and the maintenance of performance of transport aircraft play an important role. Thus, fundamental research mainly concentrates on these topics. Also the study of synthetic fuels as a possible alternative to fossil fuels forms a central research topic. Concerning this, attention has to be paid to high costs on one hand and the time it takes to develop aircrafts equipped with technologies suitable for utilizing synthetic fuels on the other. Thus long-term usability of aircrafts is a further aim to meet with respect to the projects overall objective. Picking up on that, life cycle analysis of future transport aircrafts constitutes a further important research field. In order to avoid a subsidence of performance of aircrafts with novel hybrid-electric drive and storage solutions, the projects also deals with how to achieve advancements concerning propulsion and reduction of resistance.
A central task of the project is the generation of interdisciplinary evaluation methods for air transport systems, situated in the midst of a proliferating energy transition. These methods are to be constantly revised, developed and complemented, thereby equally considering socio-scientific and economic methods. Technological considerations are also supplemented by design-scientific theories. This illustrates the interdisciplinary orientation of the project, which is divided into three core research areas: