EU Initiative For Eco Friendly Green Regional Aircraft Taking Wings At Ireland
Noisy planes are a nightmare for people staying near airports and in the vicinity of important flight paths. But that problem will soon get resolved, if the engineers at Trinity College, Dublin have their way. They are working on an EU project that seeks to reduce noise pollution and carbon emission of planes, reported Yahoo News.
The project named 'ARTIC' has the engineers working with EU industry partners including aircraft manufacturer Alenia Aermacchi, EU institutes and universities. It seeks to minimise noise pollution in the modern world.
At the core of this €1.4 million project is the development of a quieter landing gear system, meant for the next generation "greener" aircraft.
Clean Sky Programme
The project us part of the Clean Sky (FP7) programme, which is a Public Private Partnership between the European Commission and the Aeronautical Industry, Artic is conjoined by two more programmes-"Wenemor" and "Allegra". Collectively, the three EU projects have a corpus of €5.4 million.
Dr Gareth J. Bennett, Assistant Professor in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at Trinity has been named the coordinator for all the three projects.
Green Regional Aircraft
The three projects at Trinity will contribute to the overarching Green Regional Aircraft (GRA) programme. This will culminate in the launch of GRA as the most commonly used aircraft in Europe in the next few years in short-haul trips and later on as the aircraft of choice for all airlines.
Unique Project
Shortly after testing the new landing gear design, Dr Bennett's team will make the equipment full-scale as the main component of ARTIC. The model will be finally tested at the largest wind tunnel in Europe, located in Holland.
In the other two projects, Wenemor consortium has designed and built a 1/7th-scale aircraft with cutting edge design Counter Rotating Open Rotor propeller engines.
Noise abatement technologies are the forte Allegra team. Currently the noise made by the landing gear far exceeds the engine noise. This is posing a health hazard for communities living and working in the vicinity of airports.
It has been estimated nearly two billion people fly a year. Although the carbon emissions are only 2 percent of the total man-made emissions, it can increase to 3 per cent by 2050.