Current aircraft technology cant meet increasing air traffic demands

There is little scope for development in todays aircraft technology, a Delft University of Technology post doctoral researcher has said in his thesis.

Washington, June 27 : There is little scope for development in today's aircraft technology, a Delft University of Technology post doctoral researcher has said in his thesis.

As part of his study, Alexander de Haan, from the Netherlands, developed a model comprising a number of different scenarios that can be used to assess how new aircraft technology can contribute to sustainability in aviation in the coming fifty years.

According to him, though progress can be made through technological development with regard to aspects such as noise pollution and CO2 emissions, the "benefits of applying this new aircraft technology will amount to no more than tens of percents for a number of sustainability aspects".

"There are potential benefits to be gained, for example, from increased scale, new landing and take-off procedures/routes, the use of lightweight materials such as Glare (a composite material developed at Delft University of Technology), and new aircraft design concepts such as the Blended Wing Body," he said.

"But from the perspective of sustainability, technological advances will certainly not be able to keep pace with the rapidly increasing demand for air travel over the next fifty years.

"This is even the case in the scenario with the lowest growth rate," as the demand for air travel will at least double during that period, he said.

"New technology can do much to improve certain aspects of aviation in terms of sustainable development over the next fifty years, but this will be nowhere near enough to compensate for the expected growth in air travel," he added.

He said even fifty years after the advent of the jet engine, today's aircraft design models offered little scope for further development.

As such, in order to make real progress/advances with regard to sustainability, a radically different aircraft concept would be needed that "incorporated not only the expertise of the various technical disciplines, but also the behavioural disciplines and political aspects," he said.

ANI