On the way to emission-free aviation

Other key research areas:

Technical developments in aviation are integrated into a complex overall system from aircraft design, production, operation on the ground and in the air to maintenance. The competence for the entire aviation system is decisive. Here, DLR acts as an architect and integrator with its overall system capability in aeronautics research.

Energy-efficient aircraft: The goal of energy-efficient aircraft is to reduce energy requirements by up to 50 percent by 2050. According to current knowledge, this can be achieved by reducing the aerodynamic zero drag by 40 percent, reducing the total weight by 10 percent and increasing the aspect ratio of the wing to up to 15. A particular challenge is the linking of all individual technologies in the aircraft design.

Emission-reduced air transport system: flight trajectories optimized for climate impacts a significant reduction in the share of aviation in global warming (CO ₂ and non-CO ₂ effects). A high-performance and low-emission air transport system integrates new aircraft configurations and can reduce the climate impact by more than 30 percent by minimizing the non-CO ₂ effects through climate-optimized routing. They account for about two thirds of the climate impact of air traffic. Optimized long and medium-haul flights in particular can greatly reduce the climate impact of contrails. This is where the greatest potential lies to reduce the climate impact of air travel particularly quickly. In addition to political framework conditions and the introduction of technical innovations, this requires increased automation and standardization in aircraft, in air traffic management and in flight guidance.

Digitization: By virtualizing development and approval, the speed of innovation can be accelerated by a factor of two and faster market availability of new technologies can be made possible. The continuous digitization of design, production and operation enables the significant reduction of development costs and risks as well as the optimization of the entire aviation system with regard to its climate impact and economic efficiency. As a virtual manufacturer (Virtual OEM), DLR can design future products and make them available.