Minimizing the climate impact of the next generation aircraft using novel climate functions for aircraft design

The aircraft’s environmental performance on fleet level is so far completely decoupled from the design process. The climate impact from aviation arising from non-CO2 effects are largely independent from CO2 emissions, but rather depend on the atmospheric state. Previously complex climate-chemistry models were used to evaluate the non-CO2...

Climate impact mitigation potential of formation flight

The aerodynamic formation flight, which is also known as aircraft wake-surfing for efficiency (AWSE), enables aircraft to harvest the energy inherent in another aircraft’s wake vortex. As the thrust of the trailing aircraft can be reduced during cruise flight, the resulting benefit can be traded for longer flight time, larger range, less fuel...

Climate-optimized trajectories and robust mitigation potential: Flying atm4e

Aviation can reduce its climate impact by controlling its CO₂-emission and non-CO₂ effects, e.g., aviation-induced contrail-cirrus and ozone caused by nitrogen oxide emissions. One option is the implementation of operational measures that aim to avoid those atmospheric regions that are in particular sensitive to non-CO...

Eco-efficiency in aviation

Air traffic guarantees mobility and serves the needs of society to travel over long distances in a decent time. But aviation also contributes to climate change. Here, we present various mitigation options, based on technological and operational measures and present a framework to compare the different mitigation options by taking into account...