The reason airplanes emit so much carbon is because of all the fuel consumption required to fly. The faster a plane goes, and the bigger it is, the more fuel it uses – hence why jet airliners are the worse emitters of the lot.
To tackle this problem, Delft University of Technology teamed up with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines to develop a more efficient airplane design. What they came up with was the Flying-V: a plane that’s all wing. The cargo hold, passenger cabin, and fuel tanks are all in the wings. Its unique aerodynamic shape enables a fifth less fuel consumption than the most advanced plane in use today.
This summer, the team – which consists of engineers, researchers, and a drone pilot from the university – had a scaled model of the Flying-V aircraft concept ready for testing outdoors.
The model version has a wingspan of 3.1 meters, a length of 2.8 meters, and weighs in at 22.5 kilograms. The full-size version will have a wingspan of 65 meters, a length of 55 meters, and a height of 17 meters. It will seat 314 passengers.
They took the miniature version of their energy-efficient, long-distance aircraft to an airbase in Germany and managed a brilliantly successful maiden flight. Before the outdoors test flight, the model had undergone extensive wind tunnel testing and a series of ground tests in the Netherlands.
Project leader Dr. Roelof Vos said:
One of our worries was that the aircraft might have some difficulty lifting-off since previous calculations had shown that ‘rotation’ could be an issue. The team optimized the scaled flight model to prevent the issue, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. You need to fly to know for sure.
Rotation on take-off was performed easily and occurred at a speed of 80 km/h. The plane’s thrust was good and flight speeds and angles were as predicted.
Now the team will develop a computer model of the aircraft, using data collected during the test flight, to further improve flight characteristics and design. They also plan to have it powered by hydrogen fuel instead of kerosene, so they’ll be figuring that out. If they succeed, then maybe the Flying-V plane will win the Freedom Flight Prize – a recently announced competition with a multimillion-dollar award for whoever flies a 100+ seater emissions-free airplane across the Atlantic Ocean first.
