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Current modelling capability for engine icing accretion prediction is still limited for App. C. To further validate icing codes in complex engine geometries, it is necessary to perform additional experimental work in relevant geometrical and environmental conditions. Within the frame of ICE GENESIS [1], an experiment has been setup to replicate the condition at the inlet of an engine first stage compressor. This paper describes the choices for the design of the engine compressor model, the setup within the icing wind tunnel and the methodology employed to obtain the results. Additionally, more effort has been focused on obtaining accurate ice shapes using a 3D scanning system. Results of 3D scans are given.

In the past few decades the number of airplanes has increased dramatically and aircraft systems have become increasingly more complex. Under these conditions, the next generation of airplanes will undergo substantial changes and will make significant technical progress to improve operational safety. This vision is entirely consistent with the adoption of Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) technology which uses merging of interdisciplinary trends to carry out safe and effective vehicle operation. Hitherto, IVHM has made much progress in the realm of maintenance and operation, but little on safety assessment. This paper discusses the issues around how IVHM could be used to aid the operational safety assessment in the aviation industry. Special attention is paid to existing safety assessment methods, and some challenges and promising research directions are highlighted.

The first cross-industry guidelines for the implementation of structural health monitoring for aerospace applications have been created as a SAE International Aerospace Recommended Practices document: SAE ARP 6461 ‘Guidelines for Implementation of Structural Health Monitoring on Fixed Wing Aircraft’ [1]. These guidelines have brought together manufacturers, operators / users, systems integrators, regulators, technology providers and researchers to produce information on the integration of SHM into aircraft maintenance procedures, generic requirements and advice on validation, verification and airworthiness. The take-up of SHM in the aerospace industry has been slow, in part due to the lack of accepted industry practices surrounding not just the technology itself (sensors and sensor systems) but also the associated issues arising from the introduction of new methods into aircraft maintenance.

In today's aircraft the diagnostic and prognostic systems play a crucial part in aircraft safety while reducing the operating and maintenance costs. Aircraft are very complex in their design and require consistent monitoring of systems to establish the overall vehicle health status. Most diagnostic systems utilize advanced algorithms (e.g. Bayesian belief networks or neural networks) which usually operate at system or sub-system level. The sub-system reasoners collect the input from components and sensors to process the data and provide the diagnostic/detection results to the flight advisory unit. Several sources of information must be taken into account when assessing the vehicle health, to accurately identify the health state in real time. These sources of information are independent system-level diagnostics that do not exchange any information/data with the surrounding systems.

UAS (Unmanned aircraft system), widely known to the general public as drones, are comprised of two major system elements: an Unmanned Aircraft (UA) and a Ground Control Station (GCS). UAS have a high mishap rate when compared to manned aircraft. This high mishap rate is one of several barriers to the acceptance of UAS for more widespread usage. Better awareness of the UA real time as well as long term health situation may allow timely condition based maintenance. Vehicle health and usage are two parts of the same solution to improve vehicle safety and lifecycle costs. These can be worked on through the use of two related aircraft management methods, these are: IVHM (Integrated Vehicle Health Management) which combines diagnosis and prognosis methods to help manage aircraft health and maintenance, and FOQA (Flight Operations Quality Assurance) systems which are mainly used to assist in pilot skill quality assurance.

The aim of this paper is to present and discuss a case study on how an Original Equipment Manufacturer's technical design center translates and integrates legislative environmental requirements into their product range. The integration of these environmental requirements during the conceptual design phase, where the significant proportion of resources is committed, is of utmost importance. Additionally, with increasing levels of product development being conducted by the first-tier suppliers, there is greater emphasis on the Original Equipment Manufacturer, who controls the product specifications, for translating and filtering the environmental requirements down the supply chain. A Requirements Management based model addressing environmental issues is described.

This paper describes and demonstrates the use of an assembly centric design algorithm as an aid to achieving minimal hard tooling assembly concepts. The algorithm consists of a number of logically ordered design methodologies and also aids the identification of other enabling technologies. Included in the methodologies is an innovative systems analysis tool that enables the comparison of alternative assembly concepts, and the prediction and control of the total assembly error, at the outline stage of the design.

Jigless assembly is an approach towards reducing the cost and increasing the flexibility of tooling systems for aircraft manufacture through the minimisation of productspecific jigs, fixtures and tooling. A new, integrated methodology has been developed, which uses a number of building blocks and tools, to enable design for jigless assembly as a result of a logical, step-by-step process. This methodology, AIM-FOR-JAM, is currently being applied to redesign the Airbus A320 Fixed Leading Edge for jigless assembly, as part of the ‘Jigless Aerospace Manufacture’ (JAM) project.

The manufacturing cost of composite aerostructures is considerably higher than that of equivalent light-alloy ones. There are several reasons for this, but the transfer of the existing technology from military to civil aviation is identified as a major problem. Neither the designs, nor the methods of manufacture, are considered cost-effective when applied to very large, commercially competitive, structures. This problem was among those addressed within a multi-disciplinary, concurrent engineering project sponsored by BAe Airbus and the UK DTI. During the four year programme, alternative manufacturing technology was developed, and Pilot-plant equipment built. The Pilot-plant was successfully used to demonstrate that wing-box components can be more cheaply, more reliably, and more easily manufactured by simple, innovative, easily automated processes.

Co-production of aircraft is resulting in demands for higher standards of manufacturing quality to ensure that parts and sub-assemblies from different companies and countries are compatible and interchangeable. As a result the existing method of building aerostructure using large numbers of dedicated manufacturing jigs and assembly tools, is now seen as being commercially undesirable, and technologically flawed. This paper considers an alternative, potentially more cost-effective, approach that embraces digital design, manufacturing, and inspection techniques, and in which reference and tooling features are incorporated into the geometry of the component parts. Within the aerospace industry this technology is known as ‘Flyaway Tooling’.