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Aerospace companies have formed integrated product teams to improve their new product introduction process. Where significant components are outsourced, the suppliers’ expertise should be harnessed for a “win-win” solution to benefit both customer and supplier. CE practices for remote team work have been developed and used in a component engineering contract between a customer-supplier pair in the United Kingdom. Details of the producibility interaction dialogue between design team and supplier production engineers were captured. The resulting model represents the deployment of engineering capability of aerospace suppliers. It supports the setting up of CE projects with subcontract engineering work and is a reference for suppliers to develop their design/engineering capability.

The paper describes a zero-dimensional crank angle resolved combustion model which was developed for the analysis and prediction of combustion in compression ignition (CI) engines. The model relies on the multi zone combustion model (MZCM) approach of Hiroyasu. The main sub-models were taken from literature and extended with additional features described in this paper. A special procedure described in a previous paper is used to identify the mechanisms of the combustion process on the basis of the measured cylinder pressure trace. Based on the identified mechanisms the present work concentrates on the analysis of the causal effects that predominantly control the combustion process and the formation of NOx and Soot. The focus lies on the changes of the thermodynamic states and the composition of the reaction zones caused by different emission control strategies.

This paper describes the impact of noise on the civil aircraft design process. The challenge to design ‘silent’ aircraft is the development of efficient airframe-engine technologies, for which integration is essential to produce an optimum aircraft, otherwise penalties such as higher fuel consumption, and, or noise are a concern. A description of work completed by Cranfield University will cover design methodologies used for a Broad delta airframe concept, with reference to future studies into alternate concepts. Engine cycle designs for ultra-high bypass ratio, constant volume combustor, and recuperated propulsion cycles are described, with a discussion of integration challenges within the airframe.

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.

Electric vehicles offer cleaner transportation with lower emissions, thus their increased popularity. Although, electric powertrains contribute to quieter vehicles, the shift from internal combustion engines to electric powertrains presents new Noise, Vibration, and Harshness challenges. Unlike traditional engines, electric powertrains produce distinctive tonal noise, notably from motor whistles and gear whine. These tonal components have frequency content, sometimes above 10 kHz. Furthermore, the housing of the powertrain is the interface between the excitation from the driveline via the bearings and the radiated noise (NVH). Acoustic features of the radiated noise can be predicted by utilising the transmitted forces from the bearings. Due to tonal components at higher frequencies and dense modal content, full flexible multibody dynamics simulations are computationally expensive.

The present work focuses on developing an integrated airframe, distributed propulsion, and power management methodology for liquid-hydrogen-fuelled HALE UAVs. Differently from previous studies, the aim is to assess how the synergies between the aforementioned sub-systems affect the integrated system power requirement, production, and distribution. A design space exploration study was carried out to assess the influence of distributing motor-driven fans on three different airframes, namely a tube-and-wing, a triple-fuselage, and a blended-wing-body. For the considered range of take-off masses from 5,000 to 15,000 kg, the 200 kW payload power requirement under examination was found to re-shape the endurance trends. In fact, the drop in specific fuel consumption due to the engine design point change alters the trends from nearly flat to a 25% maximum endurance increase when moving towards heavier take-off masses.

Testing real-time vehicular systems challenges the tester to design test cases for concurrent and sequential input events, emulating unexpected user and usage profiles. The vehicle response should be robust to unexpected user actions. Sequence Covering Arrays (SCA) offer an approach which can emulate such unexpected user actions by generating an optimized set of test vectors which cover all possible t-way sequences of events. The objective of this research was to find an efficient nonfunctional sequence testing (NFST) strategy for testing the robustness of real-time automotive embedded systems measured by their ability to recover (prove-out test) after applying sequences of user and usage patterns generated by combinatorial test algorithms, considered as “noisy” inputs. The method was validated with a case study of an automotive embedded system tested at Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) level. The random sequences were able to alter the system functionality observed at the prove-out test.

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.

This SAE EDGE™ Research Report builds a comprehensive picture of the current state-of-the-art of human-robot applications, identifying key issues to unlock the technology’s potential. It brings together views of recognized thought leaders to understand and deconstruct the myths and realities of human- robot collaboration, and how it could eventually have the impact envisaged by many. Current thinking suggests that the emerging technology of human-robot collaboration provides an ideal solution, combining the flexibility and skill of human operators with the precision, repeatability, and reliability of robots. Yet, the topic tends to generate intense reactions ranging from a “brave new future” for aircraft manufacturing and assembly, to workers living in fear of a robot invasion and lost jobs. It is widely acknowledged that the application of robotics and automation in aerospace manufacturing is significantly lower than might be expected.