The airplane engine of the future could look radically different
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A rendering of the RISE technology demonstrator. Image: Courtesy of GE Aerospace
The aerospace world's intensifying push toward zero-emissions flying could result in radically new engine designs for future commercial aircraft.
Why it matters: The aviation sector, which accounts for about 2.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions and growing, is aiming for net zero emissions by 2050 — but sustainable aviation fuels can get you only so far, while hydrogen and battery-electric technologies are promising but far off.
Driving the news: CFM International — a joint venture between GE Aerospace and Safran Aircraft Engines — is working on a potentially revolutionary (no pun intended) "open fan" engine concept, with bigger fans exposed to the open air.
- The basic idea, GE Aerospace leaders and engineers told Axios during a recent visit to the company's Research Center in Niskayuna, New York, is that bigger fans allow for more efficient propulsion.
- But bigger fan cases result in more drag and thus higher fuel consumption — and so, in the name of fuel efficiency, the cases must go.
The big picture: The goal of the program, called RISE (Revolutionary Innovation for Sustainable Engines), is to develop a jet engine with 20% less fuel burn and CO2 emissions.
- More than 250 tests have been completed as part of RISE so far, CFM announced Sunday ahead of the Farnborough International Airshow, a major aerospace trade show.
Friction point: One big challenge with an open fan design: minimizing noise, both for passengers and airport neighbors.
- The RISE team is using a system called Frontier — the world's first "exascale" supercomputer, based at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee — to simulate how tiny parcels of air interact with jet engines, giving researchers a deeper understanding of airflow, turbulence and acoustics.
- That data is informing the design of the RISE demonstrator, seen above, which features vanes behind the main fans that help direct airflow and reduce noise.
The latest: Under an agreement also announced Sunday ahead of Farnborough, GE Aerospace and Oak Ridge "will collaborate to develop new, state-of-the-art computational modeling and simulation capabilities."
- "Supercomputing and access to Frontier is changing the way we design jet engines, allowing us to solve previously impossible problems," Mohamed Ali, senior vice president of engineering for GE Aerospace, said in a statement.
The intrigue: The RISE project is fuel-agnostic, in case, for example, hydrogen is ready for commercial airliner use if and when engines like this one come into service.
Reality check: Developing a radical new aircraft engine requires buy-in from myriad stakeholders — not least of which are aircraft makers, which will likely have to come up with innovative new ideas of their own to get RISE flying.
- That said, planemakers are also under intense pressure to decarbonize, driving them to play ball with efforts like this one.
The bottom line: We're still a long way from electric airliners, if they ever take off. But tech like this may help make flying cleaner and greener in the not-too-distant future.
