Skip to main content
Vai all'homepage della Commissione europea (si apre in una nuova finestra)
italiano it
CORDIS - Risultati della ricerca dell’UE
CORDIS
Contenuto archiviato il 2022-12-27

NOVEL SYSTEM FOR AIRCRAFT TOWING WITHOUT TOWBAR

Obiettivo

The aim of the project is to save jet fuel at airports by using a new system of towing aircraft from landing/take off points to terminal instead of running aircraft on their own turbine. At the same time, the new towing system without towbar helps to reduce environmental impacts (i.e. noise, smoke, exhaust gases). It is expected to achieve an energy saving of about 3500 TOE/year per B-747 aircraft. Expected payback is between 3 and 5 years at commercial level.
In total, Krauss-Maffei has up to now sold eleven PTS 1 units (six to Lufthansa, Frankfurt, two to Lufthansa, Munich under a leasing arrangement, one to United Airlines, San Francisco, two to Japan Airlines, Tokyo-Narita).
One PTS 2 is operated by Lufthansa at the new Munich Airport.
Negotiations for further purchases in Europe, the Far East and Northamerica are on the way.
Towing of aircraft to the take-off with PTS 1 has been successfully practised by Lufthansa in Frankfurt for several months. Introduction of this procedure in big scale is, however, still pending due to operational organizational and legal (not technical) obstacles.
Whereas, during development had been assumed that aircraft fuel savings would only be achievable in towing the aircraft to the runway, it has meanwhile been experienced that also maintenance towing is an important source of energy conservation: In San Francisco, PTS 1 is used for replacing maintenance taxiing (with aircraft power) by maintenance towing. This saves the airlines aircraft fuel in the order of nearly one million dollars per year. This leads to a relatively short period for return on investment. Similar values could be expected in Japan.
In general, it can be stated that cost-energy and environmental conscious airlines are obviously increasingly acknowledging the benefits of towbarless towing.
Conventional aircraft towing requires a towbar. Danger of "jack-knifing" during barking restricts towing speed. Other inconveniences are :
- manual coupling and uncoupling is time consuming and inefficient
- to provide a multiplicity of different towbars is complex and expensive.
High speed towing from terminal to starting point is not possible, therefore, on taxi-ways, aircraft run in many cases on their own turbine power which results in high fuel consumption and negative environmental impact.
The proposed system picks up the front wheel and combines the tractor and plane as an integrated system so that high speeds (30 km/h) are available under safe conditions. The new tractor can handle current aeroplanes ranging from 100 tons (TU 154) to 380 tons (B 747) with 2 engines of 600 HP. The system structure is a U welded structure containing all the components. A 2 cylinder hydraulic device, electronically controlled, lifts up the aircraft front-wheel in a supporting structure. For the demonstration phase, a considerable number of measurement points will be provided on the tractor and the aeroplane to evaluate the operating conditions from technical and economic point of view.

Campo scientifico (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifica i progetti con EuroSciVoc, una tassonomia multilingue dei campi scientifici, attraverso un processo semi-automatico basato su tecniche NLP. Cfr.: Il Vocabolario Scientifico Europeo.

Questo progetto non è ancora stato classificato con EuroSciVoc.
Suggerisci i campi scientifici che ritieni più rilevanti e aiutaci a migliorare il nostro servizio di classificazione.

È necessario effettuare l’accesso o registrarsi per utilizzare questa funzione

Programma(i)

Programmi di finanziamento pluriennali che definiscono le priorità dell’UE in materia di ricerca e innovazione.

Argomento(i)

Gli inviti a presentare proposte sono suddivisi per argomenti. Un argomento definisce un’area o un tema specifico per il quale i candidati possono presentare proposte. La descrizione di un argomento comprende il suo ambito specifico e l’impatto previsto del progetto finanziato.

Invito a presentare proposte

Procedura per invitare i candidati a presentare proposte di progetti, con l’obiettivo di ricevere finanziamenti dall’UE.

Dati non disponibili

Meccanismo di finanziamento

Meccanismo di finanziamento (o «Tipo di azione») all’interno di un programma con caratteristiche comuni. Specifica: l’ambito di ciò che viene finanziato; il tasso di rimborso; i criteri di valutazione specifici per qualificarsi per il finanziamento; l’uso di forme semplificate di costi come gli importi forfettari.

DEM - Demonstration contracts

Coordinatore

KRAUSS-MAFFEI VERKEHRSTECHNIK GMBH
Contributo UE
Nessun dato
Indirizzo
KRAUSS-MAFFEI-STRASSE 2
8000 Muenchen
Germania

Mostra sulla mappa

Costo totale

I costi totali sostenuti dall’organizzazione per partecipare al progetto, compresi i costi diretti e indiretti. Questo importo è un sottoinsieme del bilancio complessivo del progetto.

Nessun dato
Il mio fascicolo 0 0