Aircraft Preliminary Design: a Windowless Concept

This paper describes the preliminary design of a short-medium range windowless aircraft, with the aim to reduce fuselage weight. As a matter of fact, the aircraft weight reduction is the main element to reduce fuel consumption providing advantages in terms of operational costs reduction and environmental impact of the flight operations. An innovative solution based on OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) technology is considered to improve passengers’ comfort avoiding claustrophobic effects that can arise from the elimination of traditional windows. A traditional configuration is considered as reference: weight and cost reduction provided by the introduction of a windowless configuration are assessed by means of analytical study. Moreover, the preliminary design activity has been coupled with the development of a digital mock-up. A small-scale demonstrator of the selected configuration has been manufactured by means of a rapid prototyping technique.