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Adhesive joining of structural components will assume an increasingly important role in designing and manufacturing lightweight structures for aerospace platforms. The latest book from SAE International, Adhesive Joining of Structural Components: New Insights and Technologies explores recent advancements in adhesive bonding, used in the manufacture of primary aircraft fuselage and wing structures since 1945.

Four of these technologies – smart coatings for corrosion detection and protection, aluminum alloys for high temperature applications, particle contamination mitigation technologies, and thermal and environmental barrier coating systems – are among NASA’s most in-demand technologies and have been applied to mainstream engineering projects.

A cowling, or engine cover, is a critical airframe component that reduces drag and directing airflow into the engine. For the E-8C JSTARS, an aircraft with four massive Pratt and Whitney JT3D-based TF33-102C turbofan engines, each set of engine cowling components can cost up to $80,000 per set. Even a slightly warped cowling renders the entire housing unsafe and unserviceable.

In contrast to the stiff, rigid wings found on most commercial aircraft, flexible wing technology is considered essential to next generation, fuel efficient aircraft. However, flexible wings are susceptible to “flutter,” or highly destructive aeroelastic instability. To better understand and mitigate flutter, engineers at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC) equipped the X-56 with fiber optic sensing (FOS) technology.

On June 6, a joint team from ONERA – internationally known as “The French Aerospace Lab” – and Germany’s DLR completed an eight-day course of static ground vibration testing on the new model.

GA-ASI plans to make the first-ever, trans-Atlantic flight of a MALE RPA with its company-owned MQ-9B SkyGuardian/MQ-9 Reaper from Grand Forks, N.D., to RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, England.

Single source e-boosting allied to 48V technology for small capacity engines in traffic dense environments could "leapfrog" turbo or turbo plus eboost solutions, believes Aeristech's chard Wall.

Aireon LLC, a global aircraft tracking and surveillance company in McLean, Va., is inviting aircraft operators, regulators, search-and-rescue organizations, and air navigation service providers (ANSPs) to pre-register for Aireon Aircraft Locating and Emergency Response Tracking (ALERT). Aireon ALERT, operated by the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA), is being touted as the aviation industry’s first and only free, global, real-time emergency aircraft location service, which is slated to begin service in Q1 2019.

NASA Science Mission Directorate officials in Washington are funding three new projects selected from a pool of 25 received in response to the NASA Earth Science Technology Office’s (ESTO’s) solicitation for the In-Space Validation of Earth Science Technologies (InVEST) program element A.49 of ROSES (Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences) 2017, supporting the Earth Science Division (Solicitation NNH17ZDA001N).

Hardide Coatings was awarded funding from the National Aerospace Technology Exploitation Programme (NATEP) aerospace initiative. Hardide Coatings – which develops, manufactures and applies its proprietary Hardide-A coating – will use the funding to further develop two projects related to coating technology for aircraft components.

SaraniaSat, an aerospace startup in Los Angeles, won a three-year, $5.1 million NASA In-Space Validation of Earth Science Technologies (InVEST) contract to test and advance the company’s Hyperspectral Thermal Imager (HyTI), being touted as a unique, disruptive technology for hyperspectral remote sensing, a technology also known as imaging spectroscopy used to detect and identify minerals, vegetation, and manmade materials.

Future airspace will be filled with unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) or drones, commercial aircraft, helicopters, and more. Several prototypes are currently targeting urban air mobility (UAM) platforms, such as air taxis, and revolutionary aircraft models like next-generation commercial supersonic aircraft. Add to this autonomous swarm technologies, enabling manned-unmanned teaming, and systems for future vertical lift and it’s clear that the technology wave can easily become overwhelming.

The potential of daily on-demand aviation in and around cities is a major goal of many aerospace start-ups, including those that participated in the panel at SAE International’s AeroTech Americas 2019 event in Charleston, South Carolina. Companies like Zeva Aero, Detroit Flying Cars, and Varon Vehicles, are continuing to develop various vehicle types, whether they generate lift during forward flight or use a multi-rotor vertical flight approach, to make widespread personal urban air mobility (UAM) a reality in the coming years.

VPT Inc. is introducing its SVPL series space-qualified, radiation-hardened point of load DC-DC converters – covering an input voltage range of 3.1 volts to 13.2 volts and offered in 6-, 9-, and 12-amp output surface-mount options – designed specifically for space applications facing harsh radiation environments while requiring low voltages and tight regulation for high-performance processors.

Airbus SE is shifting its Connected Experience cabin concept into the first stages of reality with cooperative buy-in from gategroup Holding AG, Stelia Aerospace, and Recaro Aircraft Seating. Up until the partnership announcement, Airbus had been collecting extensive market feedback and refining its Internet of Things (IoT) approach to aircraft interiors, with real-time interconnected galleys, in-flight service carts, seats, and overhead bins.

Officials at GE Aviation and Teradata are expanding their partnership to provide airlines with a framework that combines Teradata’s high-performance analytics in the cloud from with GE Aviation’s edge-connectivity services. Markets and Markets Research estimates the aviation analytics market is a $2.16 billion industry that will grow to an estimated $4.23 billion by 2021.

Curtiss-Wright Corporation and Honeywell International, Inc. will co-develop a next generation “black box” device with real-time data streaming and cloud-upload capabilities. The new flight recorders device will meet an upcoming 2021 European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) mandate requiring aircraft to store a minimum of 25 hours of voice recordings.

As mobility software becomes increasingly complex and connected, so does the risk of human error and system safety. To combat this, New York-based software company AdaCore will work with Nvidia Corporation of Santa Clara, California to apply open-source Ada and SPARK programming languages for select software security firmware elements in highly-complex, safety-critical systems like Nvidia’s DRIVE AGX automated and autonomous vehicle solutions.

Standards development teams at SAE International in Warrendale, Pa., have issued 11 new technical documents and revised or reaffirmed another 54 technical reports focused on mobility engineering across the aerospace, automotive, and commercial transportation communities. The new documents, issued throughout June 2018, cover a variety of technical subject areas, including: diagnostic link connector security, mitigation strategies against illumination effects, data dictionary for quantities used in cyber physical exams, requirements for production of metal powder feedstock for use in additive manufacturing of aerospace parts, and laser powder bed fusion process.

The ability to control unmanned systems from the cockpit of a manned tactical aircraft is coming closer to reality. Textron Systems and Textron Aviation have demonstrated manned-unmanned teaming – specifically the command and control (C2) of multiple unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), commonly referred to as drones, from a single manned military aircraft.