Green Planes - winner

Continuation from Green Planes & other design issues of real want and need.

Quick post on the winner for the Green Plane competition which was announced on the 19 June 2009 online at GreenAirOnLine site


The Team that won the first prize came from Australia's University of Queensland with the runner up from Singapore's National University of Singapore.

Extract from GreenAirOnLine site :

Team Australia:

The ‘COz’ team has a multinational make-up with
team leader, Michael Heitzmann, of Swiss origin and Alex Ng, originally from Hong Kong. Both are PhD students in mechanical engineering at the University of Queensland. Third team member is Benjamin Lindenberger from Germany, an aerospace engineering student who is undertaking his University of Stuttgart diploma thesis at Queensland.

“We wanted to demonstrate that composite materials made entirely with castor plant fibre can reduce the carbon footprint of aircraft and enhance environmental protection. We are extremely proud to have convinced the jury with our project and we hope it will have a future in aviation,” said Heitzmann.

WINNER:
Video Of Univ of Queenland's Castor plant fibre technology:
http://www.airbus-fyi.com/static/videos/_australia.300.flv

The runner-up was the ‘Solaire Voyager’ team from the National University of Singapore for its proposal to use solar cell technology integrating photovoltaic cells aboard aircraft to generate electricity.

RUNNER-UP:
Video of Solaire Voyager from the National University Of Singapore
http://www.airbus-fyi.com/static/videos/_singapore.300.flv

The rest of the other finalist videos can be found online here.

Green Planes & other design issues of real want and need.

Would you choose to cut down carbon foot print by the process of elimination or by designing a another product ? I have always wondered about these 2 issues for various products. Every product has a different user culture and need. However, what intrigues me is the definition of 'need'. It determines whether we need to design another new product or a new policy that won't silently kill us all of our future.

A few issues to kill some brain cells:
If we cut down down gas emissions, but we end up having more flights, would that increase the net output of carbon gases into the atmosphere ?

This could be quite a debate.

Then here's another :
In the process of making the plane itself, we need to consume energy. Wouldn't that increase the carbon footprint as well ?

Now we are really thinking...

If we could make an optimal number of flights every year without increasing flights and even manage to reduce it; then the green technology on aircrafts would prove to be a positive output.

Would the above statement be true ?? I'll let you kill more brain cells to answer that...while I shall continue. For better or for worse, Airbus has conducted an international tertiary competition for designing the best 'green planes' of the future. 5 universities got into the finals :

• The “Big Bang Team” from Universidad Politécnica de Valencia in Spain for its windowless cabin proposal for a new eco-efficient aircraft design.

• “COz” from the University of Queensland, Australia (including an overseas student from the University of Stuttgart, Germany) for its proposal on the use of bio composite cabin materials made from castor plant natural fibres.

• “Kometa Brno” from Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic whose team developed a project on aircraft taxiway movements using electro-motors.

• “Solaire Voyager” from the National University of Singapore, selected for its solar cell technology project integrating photovoltaic cells aboard aircraft to generate electricity.

• “Stanford ADG” from Stanford University in the USA for their proposal on inverted V formation flight, building on the model of migrating birds to reduce energy consumption.

Finally when you see a green plane up in your blue skies, do drop the minphf a note here at blogger. Cheers !

[1st image : Concepts from Boeing, http://www.yourcarbonprint.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24&Itemid=15]
[2nd image : Design from the CleanEra project, http://gizmodo.com]


Other references:

• ethics : http://www.iisd.org/ic/info/ethics.htm
• Poitics of green design: http://multispective.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/the-politics-of-sustainable-design/
• technical comments from the TU Delft http://cleanera.weblog.tudelft.nl/

References:

• http://www.greenaironline.com/news.php?viewStory=433
• http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_373775.html
• http://www.yourcarbonprint.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24&Itemid=15