The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration Office of Environment and Energy, in collaboration with Transport Canada, is developing a comprehensive suite of software tools that will allow for thorough assessment of the environmental effects of aviation. The main goal of the effort is to develop a new, critically needed capability to assess the interdependencies among aviation-related noise, emissions, and associated environmental impact and cost valuations, including cost-benefit analyses. A building block of this suite of software tools, which provides an integrated analysis of noise and emissions at the aircraft level, is the Environmental Design Space (EDS), an effort undertaken by PARTNER.
EDS can provide a capability to estimate source noise, exhaust emissions, and performance for potential future aircraft designs under different policy and technological scenarios. The capability will allow for assessments of interdependencies. In addition, once EDS is connected to the Aviation Aviation Environmental Portfolio Management Tool and the Aviation Environmental Design Tool, the combined environment will be able to assess operational, policy, and market scenarios. While the primary EDS focus is future aircraft designs (which includes technology modifications to existing aircraft), the tool will also be capable of analyzing existing aircraft designs (current technology levels) under different scenarios when there is a need to simulate existing aircraft in a higher fidelity than is possible using existing noise and emissions tools. Capturing high-level technology trends will provide a capability for assessment of benefits and impacts. You can read more about EDS and its role in the Environmental Tool Suite on the FAA's Environmental Tool Suite FAQ page.
Supporting the International Civil Aviation Organization/Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection, the Joint Planning and Development Office, and FAA decision-making by developing the Environmental Design Space integrated modeling tool for assessing future Vehicle Trade Spaces.
Georgia Institute
of Technology
Dimitri Mavris, Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology, dimitri.mavris@ae.gatech.edu
Michelle Kirby, Georgia Institute of Technology, michelle.kirby@aerospace.gatech.edu
Joseph DiPardo joseph.dipardo@faa.gov
• Environmental Design Space Progress, presented at the ICAO Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection 7th Meeting, 5-16 February 2007, Montréal, Canada. Download (.pdf 148K)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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