CINCINNATI - GE Aerospace in Cincinnati, in partnership with Boeing in Arlington County, Va., the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will use advanced supercomputers to explore how Open Fan jet engine technology can be integrated with aircraft designs. The project aims to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions in line with the aviation industry's push for more sustainable technologies.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has allocated 840,000 hours of supercomputing time for the project through its Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program. The program supports research requiring substantial computational resources.
Open Fan engines feature a novel architecture that replaces traditional engine casings with larger, exposed fans, reducing drag and boosting efficiency. GE Aerospace engineers have previously used high-performance computing to evaluate these engine components' performance and noise levels. The new project will expand on that work by simulating how an Open Fan engine performs when integrated with an aircraft wing under realistic flight conditions.
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GE Aerospace says that replicating the aerodynamics of a full-size engine and aircraft in such detail would not be feasible without cutting-edge computational resources. The team will leverage the DOE's Aurora supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory and the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the second- and third-fastest machines in the world, respectively. These systems can perform more than a quintillion calculations per second.
"Advanced supercomputing capability is a key breakthrough enabling the revolutionary Open Fan engine design. Airplane integration is critical. Today's announcement with Boeing, NASA, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to simulate the latest airplane and engine designs continues a longstanding legacy of world-leading innovation in the aviation industry," said Arjan Hegeman, GE Aerospace's general manager for future flight technology.
The Open Fan engine is one of several technologies under development through CFM International's Revolutionary Innovation for Sustainable Engines (RISE) program, an initiative to enhance aviation sustainability. The RISE program, launched in 2021, aims to achieve more than 20% fuel efficiency improvement and a corresponding 20% reduction in CO2 emissions compared to the most efficient engines currently in use.
Through this program, engineers are advancing designs like Open Fan engines, compact engine cores, and hybrid-electric systems, all intended to work with 100% Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). To date, more than 250 tests have been conducted under the RISE program.