Mathematically modeling cleaner aircraft

A European research consortium intends to develop a numerical model that will allow CO2 emissions of new aircraft engines to be halved and NOx emissions to be reduced by 80%. The project, which started last Friday in Eindhoven, is coordinated by dr.ir. Jeroen van Oijen of TU/e.

The project is called DREAMCODE – Development of Reliable Emission and Atomization Models for COmbustor DEsign. It forms part of a larger European project, called CleanSky, aimed at technology breakthroughs to meet more stringent environmental demands. Through these projects the EU is bringing the aviation industry and advanced research institutes closer together.

Acting as coordinator for DREAMCODE, TU/e will work together with RWTH Aachen University, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Imperial College London and aircraft engine builder Rolls-Royce in the coming three years on this project. The aim is to develop an accurate and reliable numerical model to predict the emissions of new, advanced aircraft engines. The model will allow the development of new, environment-friendly engines for commercial aircraft, reducing CO2 emissions by 50% and NOx emissions by 80%. Associate professor Jeroen van Oijen, from the TU/e Combustion Technology group led by professor Philip de Goey, is the project coordinator.

Each of the research institutes involved has its own specialization in the fields of modeling and combustion – for TU/e this is the development of efficient calculation methods for complex chemical processes during combustion, involving tens of thousands of reactions between hundreds of chemical components. This demands so much computing power that such a detailed model cannot be used in the simulation of a real engine. TU/e has developed a method to make a simplified chemical model that allows the computations to be carried out without losing too much accuracy.

Provided by Eindhoven University of Technology