Members of the Silent Aircraft Initia­tive (SAI) team, led by the Cambridge-MIT Institute, are to meet NASA and Boeing in March to discuss options for extending the future of the project.

The meeting, to be held at MIT, will include several other companies involved in the three-year SAI study that formally ended in 2006, and will examine "what specific next steps we should take if were to go forward with it in a concentrated way, rather than random academics," says MIT SAI lead Edward Greitzer.

Future directions could include a revised design aimed at maximising fuel reductions rather than noise, as well as more work on nearer-term, lower-risk versions. Specific follow-up research areas will also be required in propulsion/airframe integration, structural aspects of the non-circular pressure vessel, variable-area/thrust-vectoring nozzle and low-speed aerodynamics.

"The most evident challenge is the propulsion system," says Greit­zer. He says work is needed to focus on inlet design, aero-mechanical areas, operability and performance. The biggest single challenge of the current SAX-40 configuration is devising a fan able to cope with distortion caused by the boundary layer, which is ingested over the top of the fuselage.

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