Radical planes take shape

(Source: BBC)

Engineers and designers are giving commercial aircraft a makeover, in a bid to make them faster, greener and more efficient. Look up into the skies today at a passing aeroplane and the view is not that much different to the one you would have seen 60 years ago. Then and now, most airliners have two wings, a cigar-shaped fuselage and a trio of vertical and horizontal stabilizers at the tail. If it isn’t broke, the mantra has been, why fix it, particularly when your design needs to travel through the air at several hundred miles an hour packed with people.

Flying high

Researchers are working to develop the next generation of green, commercial airliners that aim to reduce pollution, noise and fuel use.

Delta force

This ‘flying wing’ by Northrop Grumman would have engines embedded inside the fuselage and shielded exhaust outlets to reduce noise.

Fat body

Flying wings and hybrid-wing body planes, such as Nasa’s N3-X, produces lift with their entire airframe, cutting drag and reducing fuel use.

Double bubble

However, wider bodied planes, such as MIT’s D8, may be less acceptable to passengers because of the reduced number of windows per seat.

Double take

Other concepts look more familiar. ‘Amelia’ has a hybrid wing-body airframe and high-lift ‘blown wings’ that increase lift.

Boxed in

Lockheed Martin's diamond box-wing design is now feasible thanks to lightweight fibre-reinforced composite materials.

Pick me up

Boeing’s Sugar Volt is characterised by its long wings. But its use of hybrid electric motors could be its most radical feature.

Shock test

Electric motors are taken to an extreme with the Airbus VoltAir concept, which would use shrouded propellers powered entirely by batteries.

Feeling supersonic

Supersonic flight could also return using shapes that reduce a craft’s propensity to generate sonic booms and reduce aerodynamic drag.