Leonardo Times 2015/2016

Modular fuselage design for commercial aircraft to cope with

seasonal variation in passenger demand.
The subject of this research is a new concept of modular aircraft designed to cope with the seasonal
variation in passenger demand by opening the fuselage and increasing its length with extra bits of
fuselages. The goal is to nd out if this new aircraft concept is more profitable than the current
alternatives.

The long standing 5% growth rate per year in air tra c demand (measured in Revenue Passenger
Kilometers (RPK)) is expected to continue for the next 20 years[1]. Limiting the environmental impact
of aviation is clearly going to be a challenge for the aircraft manufacturers and airlines. To be
profitable, airlines require a high intensity of operation. This is why the important seasonal variation in
passenger trac is a crucial problem. The eect is well documented and gure 1 shows 2 years of
international trac starting in July 2012 according to IATAs monthly report. As it can be seen, there is
an important variation between the quietest month, February, and the busiest months of July and
August. The seasonal variation can be computed between the quietest month (252 10^9RPKs,
February 2013) and the busiest month (360 109RPKs, August 2013) compared to the average of the
year 2013: 304109RPKs. So the lowest month has17% less tra c than average and the highest
month 18% more. This results in a variation of 35% maximum.

Figure 1: July 2012 to July 2014 International Passenger Market [2]

The load factor airlines have managed to reach in 2013 is 79.5% [3]. It is a historical record but there
is still room for improvement. One way of improving the load factor is by using modular aircraft, which
is the subject of this article.

Next to the forecast growth of the market and the need to decrease emissions, there is also an
emphasis in the aerospace industry to move from the initial "higher, faster, farther" era to the "better,
faster, cheaper" era. This means that the goal is to decrease the total life-cycle cost of aircraft while
keeping good performances. This in turn, translates to aircraft manufacturers being more conservative
in taking risks and privileging incremental innovations instead of radical ones.

Rather than betting the company with revolutionary technology, aerospace rms are increasingly
changing their approach. The new product strategy aims to develop future programs in incremental
steps, rather than the more risky alternative: "moon-shots"[4]. According to Boeings ex-CEO Jim
McNerney, the focus of the aircraft manufacturers should be on replicating systems and technologies
already proven and paid for. The vision is sensibly the same at Airbus. As a result, the more attractive
options are to re-engineer familiar platforms and harvest new technology to deliver programs like the
A320neo and the 737MAX. The consequence of this conservative approach is that there are less new
programs launched by aircraft manufacturers. The rst new program scheduled is by 2030, to replace
the A320neo and 737MAX. Even those programs are going to be conservative [5]. A modular aircraft,
Leonardo Times 2015/2016

as investigated in this research, has a fuselage that can be opened to add sections in order to
increase its passenger capacity. Varying the size of the fuselage would take place twice a year to
follow the seasons, or maybe a few time over the course of the aircrafts life to adapt to the market.
The concept of having a modular fuselage is in line with this reduction in risk-taking strategy. In
addition it oers more exibility to the airlines that have to make long-term investments in aircraft
without knowing the trac demand and competition state in the future.

For this research, two main tools have been developed. The first one is a family aircraft design tool
used to generate a reference basis. This Matlab optimization tool is designed to assign the optimal
aircraft to the optimal routes using operations research and a mixed integer programming approach.

The second design tool is based on the Faculty's aircraft preliminary design tool called The Initiator
modified to design and analyze the modular aircraft. The inputs are the number of seats and the range
of the aircraft. The output is a concept aircraft including: aircraft geometry, operational performances,
weight estimation, aerodynamics.

Those two tools were used on two study cases: the aircraft (carrying 100 and 150 passengers in the
short and long configuration respectively) and a fleet of aircraft. The goal of the first study case is to
analyze the impact of the mass penalty of the connection mechanism on the profitability of the aircraft.
It also allowed to select the best concept. Since the goal is to change as little parts as possible
between the long and short versions of the aircraft, it was assumed that the wing and tail would stay
constant and that the engines and landing gears would be changed between both aircraft
configurations. It turns out that a large wing with a small tail is the best concept and that the plugs
should be located near the end of the fuselage, where the stresses, constraints and fuselage structure
complexity are the lowest as displayed in the following figure.

Figure 2: Mass penalty and plugs locations.

The mass penalty of the connection mechanism is approximated by sizing an idealized bolt connection
for 9 load cases (steady flight and hard landing) with a safe life philosophy. The failure criteria used for
the stresses are the resulting yield after 50 000 cycles using a safety factor of 8. The resulting mass
penalty for the short and long version is given in the following table
Leonardo Times 2015/2016

Next, the profitability is studied. The revenues are calculated by assuming standard yield of 0.1 and
0.3 $/pax/nm for economy and first class respectively. From those revenues, the total operating costs,
interests and taxes are subtracted to give the profits. As expected, the modular aircraft is less
profitable than the optimal aircraft. It turns out that the mass penalty has a small impact on the
profitability of the aircraft compared to the impact of the wing design. Indeed, the large aircraft's wing
is used on the short version. This leads to a sub-optimal wing loading affecting negatively the aircraft's
performances and profitability.

At the fleet level, the better fit between the passenger demand and offer allows for less spill (divided
by two). However, this advantage does not compensate the sub-optimal design.

To conclude, the goal of this research was to find out if a modular concept is a good solution for a
more cost-effective aircraft. This was studied by analyzing the impact of the mass penalty and the
aircraft's performances on the profitability. The results show that the major impact is caused by the
non-optimal wing, that the mass penalty has little impact on profitability and that in order to make the
modular design competitive with the optimal aircraft, the load factor should be increased from 80% to
86%. Therefore, the next step would be to find out if such a concept could improve the load factor
enough to be competitive.

References:

[1] Boeing. Long-term Market outlook 2013-2032.http://www.boeing.com/boeing/commercial/cmo/

[2] IATA. Air passenger market analysis. (July 2014).

http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/Documents/economics/passenger-analysis-jul-2014.pdf.

[3] IATA. Air passenger market analysis. (Dec. 2014).

http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/Documents/economics/passenger-analysis-dec-2014.pdf.

[4] Doug Cameron. Boeing CEO Wants Incremental Innovation, Not "Moon-Shots. In: The Wall
Street Journal (May 2014).

[5] Stanley Caravalho. Boeing plans to develop new airplane to replace 737 MAX by 2030. In:
Reuters (Nov. 2014).