Project description
Towards greener flights
The emissions of exhaust gases and water vapour creating contrails are major contributors to global warming. Reducing emissions from aviation is therefore vital, but in a way that maintains mobility. Changes in flight trajectory design and air traffic control operations are an appropriate way to reduce emissions in the short and medium term. With this in mind, the EU-funded GREAT project aims to decrease fuel consumption and gas emissions during gate-to-gate flight phases. It will do so by developing and evaluating an environmentally friendly air traffic management operational concept as well as adapted airspace designs and green trajectory optimisation technologies, and by supporting avionic systems. The project will demonstrate how aviation could significantly reduce its impact on climate change by following this approach.
Objective
The perception of environmental problems especially global warming is more than ever an issue, especially in this day and age when reaching agreements on today's climate targets is a challenge and a topic of concern among European citizens of all ages. Associated effects of global warming, like extreme weather events, are driven primarily by the emission of exhaust gases (especially CO2, nitrogen oxides and methane) and water vapour creating contrails. Hence, reducing emissions to preserve the environment, while keeping the mobility is a central society need now and in the future. To reduce the emissions in short and medium term, changes in flight trajectory design and ATC operations are an appropriate means. Thereby, the flight trajectories are influenced on one hand by environmental and aircraft parameters, and on the other by ATC driven parameters, like route length or usable altitudes. During flight execution, re-planning on board of an aircraft using the flight management system enables to consider dynamic effects on the tactical level, like changes in the weather situation. For the efficiency of such a greener trajectory, it is necessary that the trajectory can be flown in the planned way, even under the actual traffic situation controlled by ATC, which today is often not the case. The overall objective of the cooperation of Chinese and European partners in GreAT is to reduce the fuel consumption and gas emissions during “gate-to-gate” flight phases through developing and assessing environment-friendly air traffic operational concept, adaptive airspace and green trajectory optimization technologies, and supporting avionic systems. Evaluation campaigns between the European partners and in combination with the Chinese partners through cross evaluations are planned to validate the proposed concept and show a potential significant reduction of the aviation’s impact on climate change.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringaircraft
- natural scienceschemical sciencesorganic chemistryaliphatic compounds
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuels
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
- social sciencessocial geographytransporttransport planningair traffic management
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
51147 Koln
Germany