NASA Focuses On Green Aviation Research
Graham Warwick graham_warwick@aviationweek.com
NASA is to create a new research program focused on reducing aircraft fuel burn, noise and emissions and accelerating transfer of the technologies developed to the aviation community.
The new Integrated Systems Research Program (ISRP) is the centerpiece of NASA's $507 million budget request for aeronautics research in Fiscal 2010, and is supported by a $59.5 million increase over the funding requested for Fiscal 2009.
NASA's aeronautics budget for 2009 actually ended up at $650 million, thanks to a $53.5 million increase from Congress and another $150 million in stimulus funding, so the 2010 request looks lower but represents continued stable funding, says Jaiwon Shin, associate administrator for the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.
Stable funding since NASA's aeronautics research was restructured is one reason behind creation of the ISRP. "Since we reformulated aeronautics in 2006 we have seen tremendous progress," he says. This is driving the need to integrate and test promising technologies and accelerate their transfer to the industry.
The ISRP will take individual technologies from within their "silos" in NASA's Fundamental Aeronautics program, and "test them in an integrated fashion in a relevant environment to see if the intended benefits are realized when they are combined at a system level," Shin says.
As a first step, the ISRP will support the Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) project, to be funded at $62.4 million for Fiscal 2010. This aims to simultaneously reduce fuel burn, noise and emissions. "We are talking 40-50% fuel-burn reduction. We're not interest in 5-10%," he says.
The ERA project will take over several technology demonstrations original planned for the Subsonic Fixed Wing project under Fundamental Aeronautics, but which are "ready to graduate," says Shin. These include windtunnel tests of hybrid wing-body aircraft and open-rotor engine models to determine noise and fuel-burn reductions.
Windtunnel and flight tests are planned of natural and hybrid laminar flow designs to determine whether the promised drag reductions and fuel savings can be maintained. The project will also test engine combustors with low nitrogen-oxide emissions, and advanced composites structures that can reduce aircraft weight.
Additional "out-year" research to be conducted under ISRP and ERA will be worked out over the next few months, says Shin. This is likely to involve moving more technologies out of the Subsonic Fixed Wing project as they mature.
NASA is making other changes to align its aeronautics research even more closely with the FAA's Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) airspace modernization program.
Shin says the agency will take the lead in closing two major research and development "gaps" identified for NextGen: air-ground functional allocation and validation and verification of complex systems.
Photo credit: Airbus
