With the help of supercomputers, researchers were able to redesign a Boeing 777 wing in a way that may cut about 1,000 kilos from its weight and save up to 200 tons of fuel every year
By Assaf Ben Naria, Zivata, Science and Environment News Agency
The few who have ever looked at the fine print of the electronic airline ticket may have noticed, somewhere between the excess baggage fee and the gate opening time, a small piece of information that seems not particularly significant: our relative share of the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by the plane during the flight. Traveling on a flight from Tel Aviv to Berlin, for example, is responsible for the emission of 470 kg of carbon dioxide - even if inside the sealed passenger compartment this fact is not really noticeable.
About a year ago, 191 countries signed one of the most important agreements in the aviation industry. No, this is not an open skies agreement, but for an agreement that will help the airlines to stabilize their carbon emissions - and in an industry that is responsible for about 2 percent of the total carbon emissions in the world, this is a significant step. The plan to reduce carbon in the aviation industry, LANE, was done under the leadership of the International Civil Aviation Organization, and by 2026 it will be implemented voluntarily by the airlines. Flying the most efficient routes according to the weather conditions, reducing the weight of the aircraft and measures to save fuel are just some of the measures that the signatory countries plan to take.
One of the ways to reduce the industry's fuel consumption, and accordingly the greenhouse gases that are the cause of their emissions, is to reduce the weight of the aircraft. A new study published in nature magazine offers a surprising way to do it.
From a computer on an airplane wing
Almost every area of our lives today is affected by computers - computers are a significant factor in the cars we drive in, in the workplace, in schools and even in some kindergartens. Presidents and prime ministers depend on computers to deliver their messages to the electorate, and airports would not function without their computer systems.
Therefore, it is not surprising that computers are a significant component in the design process of any engineering component, from a water pipe to an airplane wing. But despite the great progress in computing capabilities, computer models are limited to relatively simple geometric shapes, the reason for this being a resolution limit. Now, researchers from the Technical University of Denmark claim to have managed to increase the maximum resolution by more than a hundred times that which was common until now. Such an increase will allow the design of much more complex shapes than those accepted today. But what is the difference between this and the fuel consumption of a passenger plane?
In planning the structure of a complex engineering body, not only the external geometric shape is very important, but also the way the mass is distributed inside the body. To save weight, engineering bodies will often be hollow from the inside, and the little material that will remain inside the body, the skeleton of the body, will give it the strength and flexibility it needs. To save weight and costs, the designer will choose a variety of shapes that will give strength and flexibility on the one hand, and on the other hand be as light as possible. But this optimization process is computationally expensive, so the engineers are limited to simple geometric shapes - often even those that repeat themselves.
Computational power significantly greater than what exists today, such as the one promised by the researchers from Denmark, will enable the design of much more complex bodies than we know today, and the potential for this is enormous. To demonstrate the system's capabilities, the researchers took a standard Boeing 777 wing and by redesigning the distribution of the material in the wing, they were able to reduce its weight by five percent, while maintaining its strength and flexibility properties. It may sound small, but in a field like aviation - this is a dramatic savings. The same weight savings is expected to save between 40 and 200 tons of fuel per plane every year - an amount of fuel that can be enough for a flight of up to 18 hours.
The body of the new wing looks more like an artistic display in a museum than an airplane wing, and unfortunately, with the technologies used today, its serial production is not possible. But the researchers hope that in the near future, with the improvement of the field of XNUMXD printing, the production of such a wing, and in general of complex bodies from a design point of view, will become possible. Until then, we can try and reduce the number of flights we make every year despite the tempting prices, and try to find ways to sustain green vacation.
