PARSIFAL Project: a breakthrough innovation in air transport

PARSIFAL is a Horizon 2020 project, started on May 2017, with the aim to design an innovative aircraft, based on the "PrandtlPlane" (PrP) conguration, for the civil aviation of the future. The PrP conguration allows us to reduce the fuel consumption and the external noise, especially during low speed ight. The high aerodynamic performances are used to limit the span to 36m, compliant with ICAO Aerodrome Reference Code C standard, and to extend the payload capacity to 250-350 passengers without signicant penalties of aerodynamic efficiency. The paper presents the overall characteristics of this innovative aircraft and how the PrP conguration could allow to improve the civil air transport of the future, as far as aircraft manufacturers, airports, airlines and passengers are concerned; in particular, some aspects of the architectural solutions and the aerodynamic design and optimization are underlined in subsonic and transonic regimes. Some details are given here on the fuselage design and the lifting system

Preliminary transonic CFD analyses of a PrandtlPlane transport aircraft

In the framework of the PARSIFAL research project, funded by the European Community in the Horizon 2020 program, the PrandtlPlane (PrP) configuration has been proposed as an innovative alternative to the current commercial aircraft of conventional architecture; the PrP configuration development is presented in order to satisfy the future air traffic growing requirements with better performances than conventional one, in terms of fuel efficiency, safety, pollution and noise emissions. In this paper a preliminary aerodynamic investigation of the transonic behaviour of the PrP wing system is presented; this study has been carried out by means of CFD analyses, with the aim to collect relevant information and to detect the proper design and operative space, fundamental for the following aerodynamic design activity of the aircraft. Investigations have been made on macro parameters (like wing loading or cruise Mach number) and also on local critical issues. The results obtained allows to design some initial reference configurations with satisfactory cruise performance in this very initial stage of the design process

Aerodynamic design and preliminary optimization of a commercial PrandtlPlane aircraft

The paper aims to present the phases and the achievements of the aerodynamic design activities carried out on a box-wing aircraft, called PrandtlPlane, proposed as a sustainable solution for the fulfilment of the more and more demanding requirements of the fast-growing air transport. The activities here presented are included in the on-going Project PARSIFAL (“Prandtlplane ARchitecture for the Sustainable Improvement of Future AirpLanes”), funded by European Union under the Horizon2020 Program. Starting from the conceptual aerodynamic design of the PrandtlPlane architecture, the paper follows the development of the aerodynamic design, dealing with the preliminary definition of a reference configuration, which performances have been evaluated with both low and high fidelity tools, and the optimization procedure for the improvement of cruise performance