With the major goal of climate-neutral flying, we are conducting research on potentials and synergies through highly integrated aircraft development in numerous sub-projects at TU Braunschweig, University of Stuttgart, LUH Hannover and DLR Braunschweig in the new transregio SynTrac collaborative research centre. We use interactions of the disciplines aerodynamics, acoustics, flight physics, structural mechanics and thermodynamics through a multidisciplinary, cross-system view of the aircraft development process to develop future highly efficient aircraft through innovative approaches.
A substantial increase of the overall aircraft efficiency is an prerequisite to achieve the vision of a future climate-neutral air transport system. Hence, the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement and the European green deal aim for a reduction of aircraft energy consumption of 50% by 2035. Consistently continued development of aircraft and propulsion technologies will contribute significantly to this target. The synergies associated with a highly increased integration of the propulsion systems into future transport aircraft contribute to this target to a similar degree with a potential of 10 to 20% additional energy savings. Main pillars of this integration are Boundary Layer Ingestion (BLI), Distributed Propulsion (DP), the combination of thrust generation and aircraft control as well as the manifold aspects of integration of the propulsion systems into the airframe. The comprehensive assessment of the synergies and the optimally balanced application of the main pillars require a truly multidisciplinary, cross-system view of the entire aircraft and its systems. The synergies arise from physical processes and phenomena at the manifold interfaces between aircraft and propulsion systems. These make the interfaces between the associated disciplines as well as their physical models and methods fluent to an unprecedented extent. This raises the main research question:
Which means of interaction and integration of physical models as well as experimental and numerical methods beyond the current state of the art are successful in realizing the synergies and potentials of highly integrated transport aircraft, and how large are these potentials?