« Hydrogen-powered transport aircraft consume less energy than their kerosene-fueled counterparts, regardless of the mission (from short-haul to long-haul flights). »
— D. Brewer, Hydrogen Aircraft Technology, 1991
Today, this claim is challenged by modern scientific literature and a thorough analysis of Brewer’s (NASA) work remains difficult to find.
Since January 2025, Romain JAN’s postdoctoral research aims to critically reassess these findings in light of current certification and aircraft design methodologies.
This project focuses on two main objectives:
– Reducing uncertainty in hydrogen aircraft modeling to enable a fair comparison of their energy performance with kerosene-powered aircraft, considering both conventional and disruptive architectures.
– Assessing the environmental performance of a hydrogen-powered fleet using AEROMAPS, a prospective scenario simulation tool developed at ISA.
Supervised by Professors Jean-Marc Moschetta and Christian Gogu (ISAE-SUPAERO), this research is conducted in collaboration with ENAC and funded by the Institute for Sustainable Aviation and the Rhyo Défi-Clef.
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This thesis project, led by Sindy PAEZ ORTIZ and labelled by the Institute for Sustainable Aviation follows on from an exploratory study carried out in
Bornes, L., Letondal, C., Vingerhoeds, R. (2022). Could Systemic Design Methods Support Sustainable Design of Interactive Systems?. Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design (RSD11)
On Friday, December 13, the Institute for Sustainable Aviation (ISA) hosted its 4th workshop on « Trajectories for the Future of Aviation » at ENAC.