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“Spotlight on Design: Insight” features an in-depth look at the latest technology breakthroughs impacting mobility. Viewers are virtually taken to labs and research centers to learn how design engineers are enhancing product performance/reliability, reducing cost, improving quality, safety or environmental impact, and achieving regulatory compliance. As global concerns about the negative consequences of greenhouse gases on the environment increase, regulatory agencies around the world are taking serious steps to address the issue of tailpipe emissions In the episode “Fuel Efficiency: Fuel Economy Testing” (12:05), engineers at the EPA’s National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory demonstrate how different vehicles are tested for emissions, and AVL’s technical team shows how accurate tailpipe emissions can be measured and reported.

The growing need for an efficient worldwide airspace system management, generated by an increasing traffic load, requires new capabilities for air-ground data communication technologies. In order to cope with these requirements, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), EUROCONTROL, and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) have jointly made specific recommendations for candidate technologies for the airport surface communication network. In the SESAR project, the Aeronautical Mobile Airport Communication System (AeroMACS) technology is being developed in such a way to provide next generation broadband and wireless data communications for airport surface applications (i.e. Air Traffic Control ? ATC, Airline Operational Communications ? AOC, and surface vehicles services).

The foundation of many production aircraft assembly facilities is a more dynamic and unpredictable quantity than we would sometimes care to admit. Any tooling structures constructed on these floors, no matter how thoroughly analyzed or well understood, are at the mercy of settling and shifting concrete, which can cause very lengthy and costly periodic re-certification and adjustment procedures. It is with this in mind, then, that we explore the design possibilities for one such structure to be built in Belfast, North Ireland for the assembly of the Shorts C-Series aircraft wings. We evaluate the peak floor pressure, weight, gravity deflection, drilling deflection, and thermal deflection of four promising structures and discover that carefully designed pivot points and tension members can offer significant benefits in some areas.