Conceptual design of a passenger aircraft for in-flight refueling operations

Conceptual design of a passenger aircraft for in-flight refueling operations

Van der Linden, P.P.M.

La Rocca, G. (mentor)

Aerospace Engineering

FFP

2013-07-12

Nowadays a big challenge in aviation is represented by the scarcity of fossil fuels. Hence, there is a need for a more fuel efficient air transport system. A possible innovation is a change in operating mode. Conceptual design studies showed staged flight operations to be up to 40% more fuel efficient than non-stop operations. Staged flight operation uses extra stops to split up long range missions. An even more novel concept is in-flight refueling operation (IFR). IFR incorporates a fuel transfer system in midair. This eliminates the increase in travel time, which is associated with the extra take-off and landings of staged flight operations, while maintaining similar fuel saving as staged flight operations. This thesis focuses on the design of the cruiser, the passenger aircraft that will be refueled. The design of the tanker and of the whole operational concept are outside the scope of the thesis. The design of the cruiser is performed with the Initiator, an automated design tool. The modifications to the Initiator to enable it to produce an accurate design of the cruiser are described in the thesis. The cruiser was found to have a higher payload range efficiency (PRE) as the non-stop aircraft. 10.4% better than the 5000nm non-stop aircraft and 29.4% better than the 7500nm non-stop aircraft. Top level requirements of existing aircraft were used to produce concepts with similar payload requirements (B767-300 payload=26500kg) and with similar range requirements (B737-800 range=2500nm). They were outperformed by 7.3% and 9.6% in PRE, when operated with similar passenger comfort levels as the cruiser. Since only the cruiser design is considered no exact conclusions on the fuel savings can be given. Only a fuel budget can be provided for tanker operations. Comparing tanker fuel consumptions from literature 9 of 12 tanker designs outperformed the staged flight operation, 12 of 12 the non-stop operations. In-flight has to be further researched, however initial studies show IFR can be a possible solution for a more fuel efficient air transport. The cruiser outperformed existing aircraft for the given range of 2500nm.

in-flight refueling

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:d6c4e388-bffb-4851-87bb-992d415215d8

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2013 Van der Linden, P.P.M.