Impact of insect contamination on operational and economic effectiveness of aircraft with natural flow technology

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to investigate the effect of insect contamination on operational and economic effectiveness of an aircraft with natural laminar flow wings designed by DLR. It is intended to show how insect debris located close to the wing leading edge influence fuel consumption on single missions and on fleet level as well as economic metrics like net present value. The focus will be on short-to-medium haul operations, i.e., aircraft similar to current state of the art 150 passenger seated aircraft. During the analysis process tools for aircraft design, mission simulation and computation, insect contamination as well as life-cycle cost assessment will be used. The overall goal is giving aircraft operators a better understanding of the operational behavior of NLF aircraft under realistic operational boundary conditions and related implications.