Fleet Assessment of Fuel Burn and NOx Emissions for NASA Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) Technologies and Concepts

摘要

A system-wide model for fuel burn and NOx emissions is presented whereby the introduction of NASA's Environmentally Responsible Aviation aircraft technologies on future vehicles can be assessed with respect to fleet-level environmental impact. This model extends upon prior work in three ways: Improvements in operations balancing and allocation logic yield fuel burn estimates that more closely match empirical data for domestic and international operations; enhancements to vehicle environmental performance models offer a better representation of the updated ERA technology portfolio; parametric NOx emissions models for full-flight as well as departure and arrival segments are integrated into the existing system-wide model to offer fleet-level NOx estimates. Results for scenarios featuring varying levels of ERA technology introduction into the fleet are presented that characterize potential benefits achievable. Results suggest that significant reductions for local emissions can be attained, whereas total emissions closely follow favorable fuel burn improvements.