FAA Partners With Boeing, GE, Pratt & Whitney On CLEEN Program

The FAA will be working with several major manufacturers in conjunction with its CLEEN program, which is designed to speed the development and application of environmentally progressive technologies for cleaner and quieter jet aircraft.

As part of the FAA's Continuous Lower Energy, Emissions and Noise (CLEEN) program, Boeing and the FAA each will contribute up to $25 million during the next five years to conduct flight demonstrations of emergent airframe and engine technologies that have the potential of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and community noise.

"By combining our resources and expertise, we believe we can transition promising technologies from development into service more quickly to help reduce the environmental footprint of airplanes," said Matt Ganz, vice president and general manager of Boeing Research & Technology, which is leading the program at Boeing. "We recognize the importance of protecting our ecosystem and are looking forward to working with the FAA on a variety of innovative solutions to help define the future."

The technologies being developed under the CLEEN program will be flight tested aboard two demonstration vehicles, a Next-Generation Boeing 737 in 2012, with a second series of test flights aboard a yet-to-be-determined twin-aisle airplane in 2013. This flight-test program builds on the success of the company's Quiet Technology Demonstrators, which successfully highlighted a variety of noise reduction technologies during test flights aboard Boeing 777 aircraft from 2001 to 2005.

According to Boeing CLEEN Program Manager Craig Wilsey, the technologies that will be developed and tested during demonstration flights include adaptive wing trailing edges and ceramic matrix composite acoustic engine nozzles. Adaptive trailing edges pertain to a collection of small controllable devices that are integrated into the aft portion of the wing. Most traditional wings are designed for best performance while at cruise, and have performance compromises during other flight phases. Adaptive trailing edges can help tailor the wing configuration to reduce fuel burn at takeoff, climb and cruise, and to reduce community noise at takeoff and landing. New-generation engines on commercial airplanes are more efficient, but require materials that are capable of withstanding higher temperatures than previous engines. Ceramic matrix composites offer the potential of better thermal and structural performance, while helping to reduce weight and acoustic footprint.

GE Aviation has received an award from the FAA to help fund three GE technologies, including TAPS II Combustor, Open Rotor and Flight Management System - Air Traffic Management (FMS-ATM).

"GE has always invested in advanced technologies to lower fuel burn, emissions and noise," said Dale Carlson, Advanced Engine Systems for GE Aviation. "This CLEEN award will allow us to quicken our pace on research on key technologies that will provide our customers with more fuel efficient technologies to help reduce their costs and their impact on the environment."

GE is developing the TAPS II combustor for its new engine core, called eCore. eCore will be part of CFM International's new LEAP-X engine for narrowbody aircraft as well as the new core for GE's next generation regional and business jet engines. The new core will offer up to 16 percent better fuel efficiency than GE's best engines in service today.

Advanced FMS-ATM technology will enable commercial and military aircraft to routinely fly more optimum trajectories resulting in less fuel, emissions and noise. The CLEEN award will include technology demonstrations with Lockheed Martin, AirDat and Alaska Airlines. The open rotor technology was developed by GE back in the 1980's, but by applying today's advanced data acquisition systems and computational design tools to the open rotor engine, GE has improved the design to reduce fuel consumption by 26 percent and address noise challenges. Last year, GE started wind tunnel testing with NASA to evaluate counter-rotating fan systems for an open rotor engine. The CLEEN award will support blade aero-acoustic and pitch change mechanism research.

Over at Pratt & Whitney, the FAA has awarded a one-year contract with extension options which will assist the company in further developing mature new jet engine technologies aimed at reduced fuel burn, noise and emissions. The funding will support ongoing development of advanced technologies for the new PurePower engine family with the geared turbofan architecture.

Under the CLEEN program, the FAA will support the development and commercialization of CLEEN technologies for current and future civil subsonic airplanes and jet engines to help achieve the Next Generation Air transportation System (NextGen) goals. These goals are intended to increase airspace system capacity by significantly reducing the impact of noise and air quality emissions on communities.

FMI: www.faa.gov, www.boeing.com, www.pw-utc.com, www.ge.com