Tackling Emissions in Aviation: GE Aerospace VP Enthusiastic About Latest Advances in Open Fan Architecture

Many people love to fly. That’s not expected to change in the coming decades, but what does need to change is aviation’s carbon footprint. That’s why the industry is exploring an array of new pathways to meet the challenge, testing new fuels, designing new engine architectures, and exploring electrification. Allen Paxson, vice president of commercial strategy for future of flight at GE Aerospace, is particularly excited about Open Fan architecture, whose evolution is finally on the path to commercialization. “Open Fan technology is nothing new,” says Paxson. “But over the last 10 to 15 years, we’ve broken through some of the technologies that will enable Open Fan to be as fast as a jet, [quiet], and 20% more efficient than today’s engines.”

Open Fan sheds the traditional casing around jet engines. “This would be a big step change in propulsive efficiency,” Paxson explained, adding, “We are today really amping up our game and trying to go revolutionary and looking at much more step changes in efficiencies.”

Paxson and other industry leaders were on stage in Brussels last month for a Politico Live conference, “The Uptake of Technologies to Fly Net Zero by 2050.” Also participating in the discussion were Axel Krein, executive director of the Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking, Ourania Georgoutsakou, managing director of Airlines for Europe, and Filip Cornelis, director for aviation at the European Commission’s DG MOVE directorate. Prompted by moderator Jan Cienski, senior editor at Politico, the panel acknowledged that the challenges to transforming aviation are unique, because safety itself is the highest calling, and this lengthens the product development cycle. “You can’t just pull over onto a cloud when you’re flying an airplane,” said Paxson. “We don’t compete on safety.” 

While research and development of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) and hybrid electric propulsion systems is critical and ongoing for the future of flight, Paxson pointed out that materials science and other engineering advances — put into action in the company’s GEnx, GE9X, and CFM LEAP engine programs — have already delivered a 10% to 15% savings in fuel usage and carbon emissions to today’s commercial jet aircraft as compared with their predecessors. Those three engines integrate advanced composite materials, as well as additively manufactured components that have been critical to that achievement. 

“So right away, you get almost a 15% improvement on the new aircraft versus the aircraft that are in service, or even greater in some cases, with some of the older vintages out there,” Paxson said. “Those are big step changes just with new equipment deliveries.” Given that roughly three-quarters of all flights today are powered by an engine manufactured by GE Aerospace or one of its partners, he noted, that’s a big deal. “We feel a responsibility to evolve technology for better, more efficient aviation.”

Open Fan Opens New Possibilities

Could Open Fan be one of the solutions that will really move the industry forward? GE Aerospace is determined to answer that question in the affirmative. The RISE program, a development project of CFM International — a 50/50 joint company between GE Aerospace and France’s Safran Aircraft Engines — is maturing a suite of pioneering technologies, including advanced engine architectures like Open Fan, a compact core (which GE Aerospace is developing through NASA’s Hybrid Thermally Efficient Core program), and hybrid electric power systems. 

“The real challenges” with Open Fan, Paxson said, “are in the noise. That’s what the breakthrough has been in the last 10 years. It’s really got us excited.” GE Aerospace has utilized the computational power available in Frontier, the world’s fastest supercomputer, maintained at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to simulate air movement within a full-scale Open Fan engine under flight conditions. In the evolution of Open Fan architecture, this capability has delivered real solutions to the problems of turbulence and noise levels.

The European Union is also helping to support Open Fan development through the Clean Aviation Programme, which has an overall technology development budget volume of 4.1 billion euros ($4.4 billion) over seven years. The Clean Aviation Joint Undertaking’s Krein said new engine design is among the technologies that are receiving most of the attention by the consortium, across the three core areas the EU’s public-private partnership is exploring: ultra-efficient regional aircraft, ultra-efficient short- and medium-range aircraft, and hydrogen-powered aircraft. He explained that the focus of the joint undertaking is on the development and demonstration of technologies leading to a minimum 30% efficiency increase at aircraft level for new aircraft with a range below 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles). When it comes to hydrogen, Krein cited the hydrogen-burn engine concept and the fuel-cell solution, in which hydrogen is carried aboard aircraft in liquid form to produce electricity to power a plane. 

Staying Competitive While Pursuing Transformation

The airline industry is critical to Europe’s industrial sector and requires constant updating and modernization to ensure competitiveness not just at home but in the global economy. “We need to have network airlines in Europe. It’s our industrial fabric. It’s important to serve our economy more widely, and of course, there are a lot of jobs. Aviation is a strategic sector in terms of defense and civil protection, so we need to protect these and make sure those network airlines are competitive,” said Cornelis, of the EU’s DG MOVE directorate. But the industry doesn’t just serve Europe’s domestic needs. Aviation is crucial to the region’s position on the world stage. “It’s a high-tech sector, and it’s one of the sectors where we are still leading the world. Together with the U.S., we are leading the world in aircraft technology, in engines, and in air traffic management systems. And if we want to stay that way, we have to invest.”

Georgoutsakou, of Airlines for Europe, whose airline member CEOs have written an open letter to European governments making the argument that the goals of sustainability and competitiveness need to be on equal footing, said, “If we don’t make sure that European airlines stay competitive, that within Europe we can stay connected, then we’re really going to lose out on something.” When it comes to the technology development itself, she said, “There is no single silver bullet to decarbonize aviation. It’s always a combination of many things. The two biggest contributors are SAF and the aircraft and engine tech. The third bit is better airspace management, and that includes technology which would make our skies a bit smarter.” 

When it comes to technology development, no matter how competitive the playing field, the goals for sustainability and safety remain the same. “Common standards need to be applied,” said Paxson. “This is a global industry, and we want that unification of those technologies. We’re really proud at GE Aerospace. We have 52,000 people working at GE Aerospace now — 12,500 of them work here in Europe, designing, overhauling, or manufacturing our products. It’s really important that we think globally about trying to solve this problem. All the brightest minds can come together.”