Search Results

Dents on the aircraft skin are frequent and may easily go undetected during airworthiness checks, as their inspection process is tedious and extremely subject to human factors and environmental conditions. Nowadays, 3D scanning technologies are being proposed for more reliable, human-independent measurements, yet the process of inspection and reporting remains laborious and time consuming because data acquisition and validation are still carried out by the engineer. For full automation of dent inspection, the acquired point cloud data must be analysed via a reliable segmentation algorithm, releasing humans from the search and evaluation of damage. This paper reports on two developments towards automated dent inspection. The first is a method to generate a synthetic dataset of dented surfaces to train a fully convolutional neural network. The training of machine learning algorithms needs a substantial volume of dent data, which is not readily available.

Digital Twin (DT) is a dynamic digital representation of a real-world asset, process or system. Industry 4.0 has recognised DT as the game changer for manufacturing industries in their digital transformation journey. DT will play a significant role in improving consistency, seamless process development and the possibility of reuse in subsequent stages across the complete lifecycle of the product. As the concept of DT is novel, there are several challenges that exist related to its phase of development and implementation, especially in high value manufacturing sector. The paper presents a thematic analysis of current academic literature and industrial knowledge. Based on this, eleven key challenges of DT were identified and further discussed. This work is intended to provide an understanding of the current state of knowledge around DT and formulate the future research directions.

This paper presents the design concept behind a novel remote visual inspection robotic system for fighter jet aircraft wing fuel tank inspection. This work is part of a larger research project which focuses on design, simulation, physical prototyping and experimental validation of a robotic system. Whereas this paper specifically focuses on the development concept of locomotion design choice for the robot. Therefore without an effective mobility method the robot will not be able to fulfill its purpose to access the hazardous confined spaces of the fuel tank. Aircraft wing fuel tank inspection is a challenging area of maintenance which requires a considerable amount of preparation and involvement of several tasks in order to conduct effective Visual and Non Destructive Inspection. The environment of an aircraft wing fuel tank poses several challenges due to both physical and atmospheric constraints which can be detrimental to human personal.

Water is always present in jet fuel, usually in a mixture of forms. At very low temperatures this phenomenon can lead to the formation of ice crystals within the aircraft fuel system, which can then stay in suspension within the entire volume of fuel. Pumps within the fuel system transfer fuel around the system. Pumps such as boost pumps that are typically used in fuel systems are protected by a weave type filter mesh at the inlet. Ice accretion on the surface of this mesh has operational implications as it can cause non optimal fuel flow. In this investigation, two fundamental tools are being used: 1) a high fidelity MATLAB model of a mesh strainer, pick-up line and pump, and 2) a test rig of the modelled system. The model is being used to investigate fuel system performance when exposed to fuel containing water/ice contaminants at cold temperatures.

This paper focuses on the investigation of the nature, process and effects of ice accretion on different feed pump strainers upstream of the aircraft feeding system. A suitable test rig was designed to circulate Jet A-1 containing water/ice contaminants at cold temperatures through the strainers. Following an extensive literature review, a number of screening tests were performed. These provided a strong base for an exhaustive study of fuel icing in the dynamic environment offered by the test rig. The effects of the rate of fuel cooling on the nature of ice were examined. As expected, it was observed that the yield of ice generated on the mesh screen increased with the water concentration in the fuel. It was also revealed that at higher cooling rates, a crust of snow formed on top of softer ice on the mesh screen.

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.

Global aviation is growing exponentially and there is a great emphasis on trajectory optimization to reduce the overall environmental impact caused by aircraft. Many optimization techniques exist and are being studied for this purpose. The CLEAN SKY Joint Technology Initiative for aeronautics and Air transport, a European research activity run under the Seventh Framework program, is a collaborative initiative involving industry, research organizations and academia to introduce novel technologies to improve the environmental impact of aviation. As part of the overall research activities, “green” aircraft trajectories are addressed in the Systems for Green Operations (SGO) Integrated Technology Demonstrator. This paper studies the impact of large commercial aircraft trajectories optimized for different objectives applied to the on board systems.

The simulation of natural-like snow conditions in a controlled environment such as an Icing Wind Tunnel (IWT) is a key component for safe, efficient and cost-effective design and certification of future aircraft and rotorcraft. Current capabilities do not sufficiently match the properties of natural snow, especially in terms of size and morphology. Within the Horizon 2020 project ICE GENESIS, a new technology has been developed aiming to better recreate natural snowflakes. The focus of the newly developed system was the generation of falling snow in a temperature range of +1°C to -4°C. Ground measurements and flight test campaigns have been performed to better characterize these conditions and provide requirements for wind tunnel facilities. The calibration results of the new snow generation system as well as snow accretion data on a NACA0012 test article with a chord length of 0.377 m are presented.

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.

Every state-of-art aircraft has a complex distributed systems of avionics Line Replaceable Units/Modules (LRUs/LRMs), networked by several Data buses. These LRUs are becoming more complex because of an increasing number of new functions need to be integrated into avionics architecture. Moreover, the complexity of the overall avionics architecture and its impact on cable length, weight, power consumption, reliability and maintainability of avionics systems encouraged manufacturers to incorporate efficient avionics architectures in their aircraft design process. The evolution of avionics data buses and architectures have moved from distributed analog and federated architecture to digital integrated modular avionics (IMA). IMA architecture allows suppliers to develop their own LRUs/LRMs capable of specific features that can then be offered to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) as Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products.

With the rapid growth in passenger transportation through aviation projected to continue into the future, it is incumbent on aerospace engineers to seek ways to reduce the negative impact of airliner operation on the environment. Key metrics to address include noise, fuel consumption, Carbon Dioxide and Nitrous Oxide emissions, and contrail formation. The research presented in this paper generates new aircraft trajectories to reduce these metrics, and compares them with typical scheduled airline operated flights. Results and analysis of test cases on trajectory optimization are presented using an in-house aircraft trajectory optimization framework created under the European Clean Sky Joint Technology Initiative, Systems for Green Operation Integrated Technology Demonstrator. The software tool comprises an optimizer core and relatively high fidelity models of the aircraft's flight path performance, air traffic control constraints, propulsion and other systems.