Box Wing Jet By Lockheed Martin - A Flight Of The Future!

NASA tossed a problem to the world's best aircraft engineers, to fly a cleaner, quieter and low-fuel consuming plane. And a few prototypes were considered, that could change the way we look at commercial aviation. One such prototype is the Box Wing Jet by Lockheed Martin engineers.

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The Box Wing Jet

Passenger jets devour a huge amount of fuel. A Boeing 747 uses five gallons of the fuel every nautical mile, thereby rising the fares, owing to the rising prices of these fuels. Lockheed Martin engineers created their Box Wing concept to come up with innovative ways to cut down fuel burn without discarding the primary shape of current aircraft. Modifying the lightweight materials present in the F-22 and F-35 fighter jets, they developed a looped-wing configuration that would intensify the lift-to-drag ratio by 16 percent, giving out a possibility to fly more distance by consuming less fuel while still making their space into airport gates.

The engineers also discarded traditional turbofan engines for two ultrahigh-bypass turbofan engines. In the same way as all turbofans, they produce thrust by tugging air through a fan placed on the front of the engine and by igniting a fuel-air mixture in the engine’s core. With the future fans being 40 percent broader than those at present, the Box Wing’s engines go around the core at a much higher rate than the current engines. At subsonic speeds, this alignment betters the efficiency by 22 percent. The extra wing lift also allows pilots to execute steeper dives over densely populated areas whilst working the engines at lower power. These modifications could cut down noise by 35 decibels and cut down the approaches by nearly 50 percent.