Lecture 4A: Introduction to Novel Aircraft Design

Welcome to the fourth module of the Sustainable Aviation MOOC. Now that we’ve explored how aircraft work and how to power them, it’s time to apply this knowledge. This module, we will be investigating various ways of new, futuristic, and more sustainable aircraft designs.

We hope you’ll enjoy this module’s content!

The SA01x Team

In the video lecture, Maurice Hoogreef has presented some of the current challenges related to designing more efficient and sustainable aircraft configurations. Here is a handy summary:

1. More efficient engines means larger engines, but it is getting harder and harder to integrate them in a given airframe while retaining good performance (and safety);
2. Tube-and-wing aircraft configurations have always been a good compromise among many theoretical and practical aspects, but nowadays they have been optimized to the limit of their physical possibilities.

To keep improving the efficiency of aircraft designs, incremental innovation is not sufficient anymore.
Instead, it is necessary to start looking at radical, disruptive solutions, like novel aircraft configurations and innovative engine integration concepts.