Propulsion and Power Research 2014;3(4):165–174

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Propulsion and Power Research

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ORGINAL ARTICLE

What does the future bring? A look at

technologies for commercial aircraft in the years
2035–2050
Meyer J. Benzakeinn

The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, United States

Received 13 November 2014; accepted 19 November 2014

Available online 8 January 2015

KEYWORDS Abstract Demographics and economics in the next 20 years are being examined. They
reflect a significant GDP growth and with this a strong demand for commercial aircraft not
Fuel efficiency;
High bypass ratio; only in the US and Europe but across Asia and the Middle East. The demand will focus on
Distributed systems; more fuel efficient and more environmentally friendly vehicles.
Turbines; Significant progress is being made with the new regionals, narrow-body, and wide-body
Propulsion; aircraft between now and the year 2020. Looking beyond, the world will examine new airplane
Engines; architectures, new changes in propulsion systems, and higher thermal and propulsion
Airplane efficiencies. Distributed propulsion options will come into play. With them, higher operating
pressure gas generators will be developed and great attention will have to be given to highly
integrated propulsion/airplane systems. Energy transfer requirements will lead to bigger gear
systems as well as new hybrid systems. The new machines are forecasted to offer
improvements in fuel efficiencies of over 40%.
There are many technical challenges to make all these things happen. The aerospace engineers
and scientists of today and tomorrow face unlimited opportunities to make a difference for
what looks like a very exciting future.
& 2015 National Laboratory for Aeronautics and Astronautics. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V.
All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
n
Corresponding author. The progress in commercial aviation over the last 100 years
E-mail address: Benzakein.2@osu.edu has been unparalleled. The Wright Brothers flew for 12 s over
Peer review under responsibility of National Laboratory for Aeronautics the shores of North Carolina powered by a 25 HP bicycle
and Astronautics, China. engine in 1903. A hundred years later, hundreds of Boeing

2212-540X & 2015 National Laboratory for Aeronautics and Astronautics. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jppr.2014.11.004
166 Meyer J. Benzakein

Nomenclature L/D lift/drag

MMC matrix composite
B billions of dollars η overall efficiency
BPR bypass ratio ηthermal thermal efficiency
CAEP6 NOx regulation ηtransfer transfer efficiency
CMC ceramic matrix composite ηpropulsive propulsion efficiency
dB decibel NOx nitrogen oxide
Deg F degrees Fahrenheit OPR operating pressure ratio
FHV fuel heating valve PW Pratt & Whitney Aircraft
FPR fan pressure ratio SFC specific fuel consumption
GTF geared turbofan Stage 4 relates to FAA noise regulation
hp/lb/sec specific core power (horsepower/pounds/seconds) V aircraft velocity
lbs pounds W aircraft weight

777 airplanes powered by 2. GE 90–115 engines, fly across As Figure 2 shows, while the industry revenues have been
the globe on 8000 mile journeys. They do it repeatedly, safely, going up, the profits have been flat. The cost of fuel has been
with minimum cost, low fuel consumption, low noise and low going up and driving the operating costs significantly
pollution. Great achievement! We, however, cannot stop there. (Figure 3).
This paper analyzes what we need to do for our future. We
will attempt to understand what our customers want, what we
need to do in propulsion, in airplane aerodynamics, in airplane
structures, materials, etc. We will examine the challenges and
opportunities.

2. What does the customer want?

There is a delicate balance as we move forward.
(Figure 1) The customer wants a good payload, low cost
of ownership, low noise and emissions. The manufacturers
need to balance these requirements against the development
and manufacturing costs. Figure 2 Industry revenue.

Figure 1 Competitive business environment.

What does the future bring? A look at technologies for commercial aircraft in the years 2035–2050
3. Fuel burn improvement
Fuel burn improvements have therefore to be a major
focus of the industry as we move forward. Historically,
engine fuel efficiency improvements above 50% have been
achieved over the last 50 years—about 1%/year.
Figure 4 shows that about 1/2 of these improvements are
due to higher pressure, operating systems, component
efficiencies and materials. The other half was provided by
lower fan pressure ratios and higher bypass ratios.
A look at the Breguet equation shows that:
V  L=D
Fuel mileage ¼
SFC  W
Better fuel mileage requires higher lift/drag ratios and
lower weights. Both parameters are controlled by the
Figure 3 Airline operating costs.
Figure 4 Historical fuel burn improvements.
167
airplane design. The engine specific fuel consumption
(SFC) is controlled by the following equation:
SFC…primary propulsion attribute is controlled by
thermal efficiency—High OPR/high temperatures, compo-
nent efficiencies and loss minimization, propulsive and
transfer efficiency—Low FPR, large fans and enablers,
and unducted fans and propellers.
The efficiency trends with core and propulsor improve-
ments as shown in Figure 5. One can see that core
improvements occur as the engines get hotter. Improve-
ments in component efficiencies, materials, coatings are
required. Propulsor improvements call for higher bypass
ratios, improved inlets and higher fan efficiencies.
One can see from Figure 6, the increase in specific core
power as one moves up in turbine rotor inlet temperature.
This shows that where we are with our current technology,
the required temperatures with the NASA Nþ3 goals
(which we will discuss later) and the stoichiometric limits
associated with the hydrocarbon fuels, which we are using.
So there is room for improvements but it will be more
difficult as we move ahead.
Figure 7 shows where current engines with a BPR of 5%–
8% are. We can obtain an improvement of close tp 16% going
to BPR's of 10–12. This is portrayed by the LEAP engines
developed by GE/SAFRAN and the geared fan developed
by Pratt & Whitney Aircraft. Further improvements can be
168 Meyer J. Benzakein

Figure 5 Core and propulsor improvements.

Figure 6 Specific core power increase.

obtained with open rotors and high temperature cores devel- (GTF in Figure 8) introduced a gear that permits the spool
oped on military programs like ADVENT and HEETE. up of the low pressure turbine and therefore reduces the
The LEAP engines keep a conventional direct drive in number of turbine stages required to drive the high bypass
a 2 spool system. The Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan low pressure fan. A fuel burn evaluation of the PW Geared
What does the future bring? A look at technologies for commercial aircraft in the years 2035–2050 169

Figure 7 Fuel consumption projection.

Figure 8 Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan.

Figure 9 PW geared vs. LEAPx fuel burn evaluation.

170 Meyer J. Benzakein

vs. the LEAP configuration we conducted by a joint study
between the University of Stuttgart and The Ohio State
University [1] is summarized in Figure 9.
This study indicates that the 2 architectures are within 1%
in fuel burn of each other. The differences will be
associated with the execution as these 2 configurations, as
they appear on the A320 NEO and other applications.
Another new architecture comes with an unducted fan. It
goes to bypass ratios of 30 to 35. Such a configuration was
explored by NASA and GE, who flew them on a MD 80
airplane in the late 1970's. This provided good fuel burn
improvements but generated a substantial amount of noise.
With the requirements for improved fuel burn, the open
rotor effort was revived by NASA, GE and others.
The focus has been to reduce the acoustic signature. In
Figure 10, it summarizes the effort as a number of rotor
configurations are being tested in the NASA wind tunnels.
Substantial improvements have been obtained. In the long

Figure 10 NASA/GE development of open rotors.

Figure 11 2030–2050 propulsion system vision.

What does the future bring? A look at technologies for commercial aircraft in the years 2035–2050 171

run, the author believes that the noise problem associated 4. Opportunities for the future
with open rotors will be controlled. The challenge going
forward will be the installation of these large fan systems on NASA has established goals for commercial aircraft
commercial aircraft and associated drag losses. technology development as seen in Table 1 [2,3].

Table 1 NASA technology goals.

Table 2 Projected achievements in 2030/2038.

Single aisle aircraft Twin aisle aircraft Regional jets

Baseline A320-200 Baseline B777-200 ER Baseline Embraer EI90

Fuel burn improvement 45% 43% 45%

Noise Will meet stage 4 with 70 dB margin Will meet stage 4 with 70 dB margin Will meet stage 4 with 70 dB margin
NOx Will meet Cap 6 with 80% margin Will meet Cap 6 with 80% margin Will meet Cap 6 with 80% margin

Figure 12 Distributed propulsion options.

172 Meyer J. Benzakein

To address these goals, we have to work on a host of Propulsive efficiency:

engine and aircraft technologies. They are listed in the  Very high BPR turbofans
following:  Ultra high BPR turbofans
Thermal efficiency:
 Open rotors
 Highly loaded compressors
 Distributed propulsion
 High OPR low emissions combustors
 Wake ingestion
 Adaptive cycles Weight:
 Constant volume combustion  Novel alloys/MMC's
 Hybrid electric propulsion  Non-metallics
Transfer efficiency:
 Advanced engine architectures

 Low loss inlets As we look forward to propulsion systems for the years
 Variable low loss exhausts 2030–2050 (Figure 11), we need to consider open rotors,
 Distributed power transmission distributed propulsion systems, as well as, battery and

Figure 13 Advanced concepts.

Figure 14 Distortion tolerant fan.

What does the future bring? A look at technologies for commercial aircraft in the years 2035–2050 173

turbo-electric propulsion. Key technologies to be developed Technologies to be developed are listed below:
will be high pressure ratio cores, electric systems (fuel cells, a. Highly loaded front block compressors
batteries, motors) as well as super conductivity cryogenic b. Hot section materials
systems [4,5]. Distributed propulsion systems (Figure 12) c. 15001F HP compressor
will permit one core to run multiple fan systems for d. 30001F HP turbine blades/vanes
improved efficiencies. It offers high potential for the future. e. Ceramic matrix composites
To get where we want to go we have a host of new f. NextGen disk material
technologies that need to developed. g. Tip/end wall aerodynamics
1. High efficiency, high operating pressure ratio gas gen- h. Turbine clearance controls
erators (Figure 13)—As we are driving to bypass ratios i. Low NOx combustors
of 20 and above, we will be minimizing the core size. j. Core noise

Figure 15 Passive/active advanced aerodynamics.

Figure 16 Energy transfer options.

174
2. Propulsion airframe integration (Figure 14)—This will
be a very important effort as we go to very high bypass
installations. Key technologies are listed below:
a. Slim line nacelles
b. Adaptive fan blades
c. Distortion tolerant fans
d. Multi-degree of freedom acoustic liners
e. Low jet flap acoustic interactions
3. Airplane aerodynamic improvements (Figure 15)—tech-
nologies that need to be developed:
a. Laminar flow nacelles
b. Laminar flow on wings
c. Low friction paint coatings
d. Improved aero-transonic design
e. Wingtip technology
f. Variable camber
g. Adaptive compliant trailing edge
h. Active stability control
i. Increased wing span
j. Enhanced vertical tail
k. All composite aircraft
l. Integrated structural health monitoring
m. Advanced manufacturing technology
4. Energy transfer for powering remote fans—This will
take brand new technologies. The transfer could be
done with gearing. Electric power could also be
provided by the motors. The benefits and drawbacks
of either solution are shown in Figure 16.
5. What does it all mean?
We had an independent team evaluate the technologies
and their potential benefits for commercial aircraft going
into service in the year 2030–2035. The results are in
Table 2.
As you can see, these are impressive results. There will
need to be a considerable amount of technology develop-
ments and focused programs.
6. Looking forward…the challenges and
opportunities
 The market is global and growing
○ This is good…big markets
 More players want to play
○ They bring technology competition, which is
positive
○ They bring financial competition, which can be
positive and negative
 Governments play a role
Meyer J. Benzakein
○ United States Air Force, Navy and Army Research
Labs—still strong on the military side
○ NASA going down significantly
○ European Union (EU)—strong and growing with
Clean Sky program
○ Others
 There will be a stronger need for partnerships
○ Between companies
○ Between industry and universities
 Will have to work smarter
○ Rely on component tests as opposed to demonstrators
 Technology roadmaps will be essential to success in a
very competitive world…competitive in terms of tech-
nology opportunities as well as funding streams
 The opportunity for our young engineers are immense
as new innovative products will be needed and will
flourish in this industry.
7. Conclusions
The world of commercial aviation has progressed con-
siderably over the last 50 years. Commercial travel has
become part of our daily lives. New improved engines are
being introduced on a host of new aircrafts in the next 5 to
10 years. On the horizon, there are new architectures, new
systems, new technologies, all which represent new chal-
lenges and opportunities. With them, come impressive
improvements in fuel burn, pollution and noise. It will
make a difference to our industry, to the flying public and to
the life on our planet. It will offer great challenging careers
to our young engineers.
References
[1] G. Kappler, An integrated economic evaluation of preliminary
aero-engine design concepts, Shaker Verlag, Aachen, 2013.
[2] R. Del Rosario, G. Follen, R. Wahls, N. Madavan, Subsonic
Fixed Wing Project Overview of Technical Challenges for
Energy Efficient, Environmentally Compatible Subsonic
Transport Aircraft, NASA, 2012.
[3] R. Wahls, Nþ3 Technologies and Concepts, Green Aviation
Summit, NASA Ames Research Center, 2010.
[4] S. Ashcraft, A. Padron, K. Pascioni, G. Stout, D. Huff, Review
of Propulsion Technologies for Nþ3 Subsonic Vehicle
Concepts, NASA, 2011.
[5] R. Wahls, R. Del Rosario, G. Follen, Overview of the NASA
Nþ3 Advanced Transport Aircraft Concept Studies, 2nd
UTIAS-MITACS, International Workshop on Aviation and
Climate Change, NASA, 2010.