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Featuring a ‘double-bubble’ lifting fuselage and electric tail fans, the design’s creation was led by hybrid-electric aviation company Electra as part of NASA’s Advanced Aircraft Concepts for Environmental Sustainability programme.
Unveiled earlier this week (8 June), the concept explores how targeted electrification, advanced aerodynamics and integrated airframe-propulsion could transform the efficiency and competitiveness of aircraft with 100-plus passengers by mid-century.
The wider fuselage, first proposed by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)-led team, is designed so the aircraft body contributes lift as well as carrying passengers.
Electric fans near the rear of the fuselage – included in addition to conventional turbofan engines on each wing – would accelerate the slower-moving air over the top of the aircraft, providing thrust while reducing the energy lost in the aircraft’s wake. Known as fuselage boundary-layer ingestion, the advanced design could reduce the thrust needed from the underwing engines.
Analysis by Virginia firm Electra found that the configuration could deliver up to a 17% efficiency improvement beyond gains expected by 2050 from advanced structures, engine technologies and aerodynamic improvements.
“The value of electrification in this concept is that it lets us put the propulsion where it couldn’t go before, but does the most good,” said Dr Parker Vascik, director of product strategy at Electra.
The concept is designed to fit within existing airport gates and airline operations, use standard jet fuel or sustainable aviation fuel, and avoid reliance on airport charging infrastructure or untested fuel types.
“We can radically improve how the airframe and propulsion system work together while keeping the aircraft grounded in real airline and airport operations. The goal is not just efficiency on paper, but concepts that we can actually build, certify and use,” Vascik said.
The company also adopted NASA’s open-source Aviary multidisciplinary design and optimisation tool, and developed an electrified aircraft design suite intended for public use. “Together, these contributions are intended to help advance the broader aviation research community, not just push forward a single aircraft concept,” an announcement said.
The team also included American Airlines, Honeywell Aerospace, Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, Hinetics, the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the University of Michigan Department of Aerospace Engineering and the University of California, Irvine’s Aircraft Systems Laboratory.
“Electra’s aircraft concept gives American industry a chance to lead now, by combining decades of research in lifting-fuselage design with breakthrough electric propulsion,” Vascik said.
“Yet industry will not bring this concept to maturity by 2050 on its own. That will require a NASA-accelerated technology initiative – in a double-bubble X-plane, multi-megawatt integrated generator and kilovolt-class power distribution – to bring these capabilities to maturity by 2035 and position industry to carry them into service by 2050.”
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