PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF A SHORT-MEDIUM HAUL BOX-WING AIRCRAFT AND COMPARISON WITH CONVENTIONAL AIRCRAFT

The PrandtlPlane is an unconventional aircraft architecture based on the optimal box-wing lifting system; this configuration minimizes the induced drag among all the lifting systems with the same span and lift. In this paper the effects of the adoption of PrandtlPlane configuration in the short-medium haul market are described; in particular, the introduction of this disruptive configuration has been exploited to face some of the most relevant challenges of the aviation of near future, such as the expected growth in air transportation demand, the increase in airports slots saturation and the need to drastically reduce the environmental impact of the aviation. These challenges conflict each other, as increasing the air traffic implies an increase in pollutant emissions, and the airport saturation may represent a showstopper. It is possible to address these issues through the introduction of disruptive concepts, such as the PrandtlPlane. This paper describes the application of the PrandtlPlane configuration to a shortmedium range commercial aircraft, which can represent an effective, efficient and feasible solution to the problems of aviation in the near future. The PrandtlPlane can transport more passengers than conventional aircraft operating in the same sector, thus responding to the growth in demand in this market segment; the increase in payload capacity is achieved without increasing the overall dimensions of the aircraft, therefore not requiring additional space in the airports; moreover, this configuration can significantly reduce fuel consumption per passenger compared to conventional aircraft operating in the same sector, and consequently reduce the environmental impact.