Technology

VITAL Stakes

VITAL builds on previous European research efforts, designed to cut fuel consumption, NOx emissions, and noise of aero-engines.

VITAL is addressing two major sources of noise to achieve its ambitious goals:

• fan noise, by reducing fan tip speed;
• jet noise, by reducing the gas exhaust velocity.

A higher bypass ratio will achieve the aim of reducing fan tip speed and reducing jet velocity it will also reduce the fuel consumption at a given thrust however, it also generally implies a larger and heavier engine which will increase the thrust needed to fly.

Then, the main challenge facing VITAL is to reduce the weight penalty associated with increasing bypass ratio which would normally result in weight increases in the fan, booster, LP turbine and nacelle and find a new balance between those conflicting trends to give improved fuel consumption and reduced noise. As well as developing new lightweight technologies, technology advances are required in shafts to ensure that the drive shaft between the LP turbine and the fan does not cause the engine core to increase size, also in the LP turbine to ensure that with noise reductions elsewhere that the LP turbine noise does not become dominant.