Engineering professor Jeff Defoe has been interested in human flight for a long time, looking for ways to make airplanes more efficient while still allowing people to travel and experience the world.

The design of aircraft hasn’t changed much over a century of commercial flight, and most engineering advances have focused on small gains, which Dr. Defoe believes are close to the limit: “Aviation engineers throw a parade over half a per cent efficiency gain in a jet engine.”

Now he and Peter Voyer from the Odette School of Business are reimagining what the aircraft of the future could look like — and what airline passengers might think of it.

Defoe envisions planes that dispense with large engines hanging under the wing, and instead have small electrical generators on wingtips, powered by cleaner burning fuels like hydrogen. These generators would operate small engines all along the wing, spreading out drag so that each engine requires less fuel.

Although these new designs may be decades away from runways, he notes the additional advantages of greater redundancy of engines, which could improve safety, and therefore consumer confidence in air travel.

Learn more in the full article, “Flying greener skies,” published in the Research and Innovation in Action report.