The design and performance quantification of four Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) architectures for a canard-type aircraft configuration are presented. The aero-structural sizing of the canard configuration and the sizing procedure for the proposed VTOL configurations are described and discussed. The proposed VTOL architectures are based on a range of rotor distances to the centre of gravity,

This work presents the Topology Optimisation of the Morphing Variable Span of Tapered Wing (MVSTW) using a finite element method. This topology optimisation aims to assess the feasibility of internal wing components such as ribs, spars and other structural components. This innovative approach is proposed for the telescopic mechanism of the MVSTW, which includes the sliding of the telescopically extended

This paper mainly focuses on the cooperative control of formation configuration for multiple flight vehicles in the three-dimensional space. Considering the external disturbance of the system, the adaptive non-singular terminal sliding mode control law (NTSMC) is designed based on the virtual leader-follower method, which aims to ensure that each flight vehicle reaches the expected terminal position

Increasing demand for commercial air travel is projected to have additional environmental impact through increased emissions from fuel burn. This has necessitated the improvement of aircraft propulsion technologies and proposal of new concepts to mitigate this impact. The hybrid-electric aircraft propulsion system has been identified as a potential method to achieve this improvement. However, there

Backstepping represents a promising control law for fixed-wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Its non-linearity and its adaptation capabilities guarantee adequate control performance over the whole flight envelope, even when the aircraft model is affected by parametric uncertainties. In the literature, several works apply backstepping controllers to various aspects of fixed-wing UAV flight. Unfortunately

To improve the ability of avian radar to process bird information, a statistical analysis method for the bird situation around airport is proposed based on avian radar data. By accumulating a large amount of avian radar data, hotspots of the activity area of bird targets can be determined and taken as a reference point to realise lifecycle management of each bird target from initiation to continuation

This study investigates a new aircraft flight trajectory optimisation method, derived from the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II method used for multi-objective optimisations. The new method determines, in parallel, a set of optimal flight plan solutions for a flight. Each solution is optimal (requires minimum fuel) for a Required Time of Arrival constraint from a set of candidate time constraints

Recently, transformable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become a subject of great interest in the field of flying systems, due to their maneuverability, agility and morphological capacities. They can be used for specific missions and in more congested spaces. Moreover, this novel class of UAVs is considered as a viable solution for providing flying robots with specific and versatile functionalities

The capability of aircraft tyres to sustain landing impact loads is essential for flight landing safety. Hence, the development of a reliable experimental database is necessary to validate numerical models. The experimental data on aircraft tyre landing impact in the public literature are somewhat sparse. This paper describes a detailed design rig for aircraft tyre impact testing. A finite element

During early phases of wing design, analytic and low-fidelity methods are often used to identify promising design concepts. In many cases, solutions obtained using these methods provide intuition about the design space that is not easily obtained using higher-fidelity methods. This is especially true for aerostructural design. However, many analytic and low-fidelity aerostructural solutions are limited

Stratospheric airships are lighter-than-air vehicles that work at an altitude of 20km in the lower calm portion of the stratosphere. They can be used as real-time surveillance platforms for environment monitoring and civil communication. Solar energy is the ideal power choice for long-endurance stratospheric airships. Attitude control is important for airships so that they can point at a target for

A folding wing is a tactical missile launching device that needs to be miniaturised to facilitate storage, transportation, and launching; save missile and transportation space; and improve the combat capability of weapon systems. This study investigates the aeroelastic characteristics of the secondary longitudinal folding wing during the unfolding process. First, the Lagrange equation is used to establish

The number of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, also known as drones) has increased dramatically in the airspace worldwide for tasks such as surveillance, reconnaissance, shipping and delivery. However, a small number of them, acting maliciously, can raise many security risks. Recent Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities for object detection can be very useful for the identification and classification

An electric propulsion model for propeller-driven aircraft is developed with the aim of minimising the power consumption for a given airspeed and thrust. Blade Element Momentum Theory (BEMT) is employed for propeller performance predictions fed with aerodynamic aerofoil data obtained from a proposed combined Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)–Montgomerie method, which is also validated. The Two-Dimensional

The Algerian Space Agency has been active in the field of microsatellite engineering for more than 15 years and has successfully developed microsatellites under several know-how transfer technology programs, six to date. This paper presents the flight results and lessons learned from the attitude determination and control system (ADCS) flown on the ALSAT-2B satellite, an Earth observation microsatellite

An efficient, fully coupled beam model is developed to analyse laminated composite thin-walled structures with arbitrary cross-sections. The Euler–Lagrangian equations are derived from the kinematic relationships for a One-Dimensional (1D) beam representing Three-Dimensional (3D) deformations that take into account the cross-sectional stiffness of the composite structure. The formulation of the cross-sectional

Landing gear are exposed to cyclic loads from the ground manoeuvres that aircraft perform in-service. Variability is observed in the loading magnitude associated with ground manoeuvres, along with the per-flight variability in ground manoeuvre occurrence and sequencing. Whilst loading magnitude variability has been widely characterised, significant assumptions are required regarding manoeuvre occurrence

An unusual philosophical approach is proposed here to decarbonise larger civil aircraft that fly long ranges and consume a large fraction of civil aviation fuel. These inject an important amount of carbon emissions into the atmosphere, and holistic decarbonising solutions must consider this sector. A philosophical–analytical investigation is reported here on the feasibility of an airliner family to

We previously described an efficient, lightweight and flexible electro-thermal system, based on directly drawn carbon nanotube web (CNT web), as part of an icing protection system for carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite aircraft structures. The location of the heating elements on critical lifting surface leading edges or nacelle intake lips makes them particularly susceptible to impact

The addition of wedge-like fairings onto the side of missiles and space launch vehicles, to shield devices such as cameras and reaction jet nozzles, creates additional drag, particularly when in supersonic and hypersonic freestream flow. An experimental and computational study was performed to obtain aerodynamic data on simple representative configurations to test the accuracy of simple theories for

Control laws for implementing active flutter suppression are generally derived from linear aeroelastic models. In this paper, families of control laws for implementing an active flutter suppression system were initially designed using linearised aeroelastic models based on the doublet lattice method after ignoring the aerodynamic loads associated with relatively faster time scales. Using these preliminary

A practical method to evaluate quantitatively the uniformity of fuel/air mixing is essential for research and development of advanced low-emission combustion systems. Typically, this is characterised by measuring an unmixedness parameter or a uniformity index. An alternative approach, based on the fuel/air equivalence ratio distribution, is proposed and demonstrated in a simple methane/air venturi

The research focuses on the design space optimisation of National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) submerged inlets through the formulation of a hybrid data fusion methodology. Submerged inlets have drawn considerable attention owing to their potential for good on-design performance, for example during cruise flight conditions. However, complexities due to the geometrical topology and interactions

This paper investigates the aerodynamics of a wing under figure-of-eight flapping motion based on Fluid–Structure Interaction (FSI) Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. The kinematic of a wing under figure-of-eight motion creates a condition with a variable angle-of-attack. The effect of using different angles of attack at an initial condition, namely initial pitch angles, for the wing and

The potential to recover waste heat from the exhaust gases of a turboprop engine and produce useful work through an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) is investigated. A thermodynamic analysis of the engine’s Brayton cycle is derived to determine the heat source available for exploitation. The aim is to use the aircraft engine fuel as the working fluid of the organic Rankine cycle in order to reduce the extra

In order to know the characteristics of reducing the exhaust gas infrared signal of the lobed mixer according to the external air mixing ratio, an infrared signal and temperature distribution measurement using a micro-turbojet engine is performed. A certain amount of compressed air is supplied through an external duct mounted on the micro-turbojet engine exhaust to simulate bypass flow, which is mixed

This paper presents an aeromechanics investigation of tiltrotor aircraft through the conversion regime of flight. The effects of the rotors-on-wing, rotors-on-empennage and wing-on-empennage interactions were investigated singularly and collectively to assess their impacts on trim behaviour, performance and conversion boundaries. The rotors-on-wing download was found to be dominant in the prediction

This paper proposes an alternating elliptical impingement chamber in the leading edge of a gas turbine to restrain the cross flow and enhance the heat transfer, and investigates the detailed flow and heat transfer characteristics. The chamber consists of straight sections and transition sections. Numerical simulations are performed by solving the three-dimensional (3D) steady Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes

On the basis of air heater characteristics, a new computational model was developed in this paper, which was aimed at investigating acoustics and instabilities in air heaters. This model included the effects of mean flow, viscosity, entropy waves, non-linear acoustics and realistic boundary conditions. In addition, it was practical for air heaters with hundreds of injectors, complex configurations

This paper proposes a procedure to improve the accuracy of the light aircraft 6 DOF simulation model by implementing model tuning and aerodynamic database correction using flight test data. In this study, the full-scale flight testing of a 2-seater aircraft has been performed in specific longitudinal manoeuver for model enhancement and simulation validation purposes. The baseline simulation model database

This paper develops a three-dimensional guidance and control algorithm to ensure that a manoeuverable target is preserved by a quadrotor in a long-term tracking scenario. The proposed guidance approach determines the desired altitude of the quadrotor to adjust the field of view (FOV) to the union of two desired trusted and critical regions. The dimensions of the desired trusted region depend on the

Most modern aircraft employ discrete ailerons for roll control. The induced drag, rolling moment, and yawing moment for an aircraft depend in part on the location and size of the ailerons. In the present study, lifting-line theory is used to formulate theoretical relationships between aileron design and the resulting forces and moments. The theory predicts that the optimum aileron geometry is independent

Active flow control for aerofoils has been proven to be an effective way to improve the aerodynamic performance of aircraft. A conceptual hybrid design with surfaces embedded with Shape-Memory Alloy (SMA) and trailing Macro Fibre Composites (MFC) is proposed to implement active flow control for aerofoils. A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model has been built to explore the feasibility and potential

In this paper we present a novel approach to calculate Block Time and Fuel (BTF) consumed for an aircraft model during a flight. The BTF model computes the ground distance between the origin and destination airports, derives the flight’s cruise altitude and by integrating two institutional data sets calculates the duration and the fuel consumed for the whole of taxi-out, take-off, climb, cruise, descent

With the development of China’s economy, China’s aviation market has expanded, and related industries have also developed rapidly. For the long-term development of the industry, many countries and enterprises began to make demand forecasts with different levels for the product market. The same is true for China’s civil aircraft-related industries. There are a variety of predictive models, but not all

The full-wing solar-powered UAV has a large aspect ratio, special configuration, and excellent aerodynamic performance. This UAV converts solar energy into electrical energy for level flight and storage to improve endurance performance. The UAV only uses a differential throttle for lateral control, and the insufficient control capability during crosswind landing results in a large lateral distance

New alternative jet fuels have provided many advantages in the aviation industry, especially in terms of economics and environment. However, fuel–seal compatibility is one of the major issues that restricts alternative fuel advancement into the market. Thus, to help understand and solve the problem, this study examines the swelling effect of prepared and non-prepared O-rings in different fuels and

Particulate deposits in aero-engine turbines change the profile of blades, increase the blade surface roughness and block internal cooling channels and film cooling holes, which generally leads to the degradation of aerodynamic and cooling performance. To reveal particle deposition effects in the turbine, unsteady simulations were performed by investigating the migration patterns and deposition characteristics

The design and development of Stratospheric Airships for High-Altitude Long-Endurance missions (HALESAs) has generated interest worldwide. Conventional airships usually have a single-lobed axisymmetrical envelope shape. In contrast, several non-axisymmetric envelope configurations have been proposed for the HALESAs, such as flattened single lobed and multi lobed. This paper describes a methodology

Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) are believed by many to be the future of aerial strike/reconnaissance capability. This belief led to the design of the UCAV 1303 by Boeing Phantom Works and the US Airforce Lab in the late 1990s. Because UCAV 1303 is expected to take on a wide range of mission roles that are risky for human pilots, it needs to be highly adaptable. Geometric morphing can provide

In this study, prediction of aircraft Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) is proposed using machine learning algorithms. Accurate prediction of ETA is important for management of delay and air traffic flow, runway assignment, gate assignment, collaborative decision making (CDM), coordination of ground personnel and equipment, and optimisation of arrival sequence etc. Machine learning is able to learn from

The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) audits its Member States for safety oversight and monitors its Effective Implementation (EI). The global average EI was 68.83% in 2019, with 46% audited Member States achieving 75% EI (2022 target); however, an ICAO (2016 – 2018) audit highlighted six Annex 13 non-compliance issues. One issue was that more than 60% of Member States do not have a

The use of a submerged inlet is advantageous in modern aircrafts because of its low drag resistance, small radar cross section and ease of maintenance. Although it is well known that the forebody boundary layer deteriorates the aerodynamic performance of a submerged inlet, the level of impact has not yet been fully quantified. To quantify the forebody boundary-layer effect, a submerged diverter was

This paper presents a new flight trajectory optimisation method, based on genetic algorithms, where the selected optimisation criterion is the minimisation of the total cost. The candidate flight trajectories evaluated in the optimisation process are defined as flight plans with two components: a lateral flight plan (the set of geographic points that define the flight trajectory track segments) and

Dry wind-tunnel (DWT) flutter test systems model the unsteady distributed aerodynamic force using various electromagnetic exciters. They can be used to test the aeroelastic and aeroservoelastic stability of smart aircraft or high-speed flight vehicles. A new parameterised modelling method at the full system level based on the generalised force equivalence for DWT flutter systems is proposed herein

The rotating instability in a contra-rotating axial flow compressor is investigated by experiments. Twenty-four pressure sensors were installed on the casing to capture the unsteady flow in the rotor tip region simultaneously. A double-phase-locking technique suitable for the contra-rotating compressor was proposed to characterise the static pressure contours of the rotor tip. The mean and root-mean-square

The importance of fuel injection methods and their atomisation characteristics has been well described in literature. Also, there are a large number of studies in literature detailing the impact of bulk properties of conventional fuels on atomisation and spray characteristics. However, there is a lack of knowledge on how different alternative fuels, and specifically aromatic species, impact spray and

A multi-agent engagement scenario is considered in which a high-value aircraft launches two defenders to intercept two homing missiles aimed at the aircraft. Under the assumption that all aircrafts have first-order linear dynamic characteristics, a combined multiple-mode adaptive estimation (MMAE) and a two-way cooperative optimal guidance law are proposed for the target–defenders team. Considering

This paper presents a performance analysis on a novel engine concept, currently under development, in order to achieve hybrid air-breathing rocket technology. A component-level approach has been developed to simulate the performance of the engine at Mach 5, and the thermodynamic interaction of the different working fluids has been analysed. The bypass ramjet duct has also been included in the model

Carrier-based unmanned aerial aircraft (UAV) structure is subjected to severe tensile load during takeoff, especially the drawbar, which affects its fatigue performance and structural safety. However, the complex structural features pose great challenges for the engineering design. Considering this situation, a structural design, fatigue analysis, and parameters optimisation joint working platform

Real-time flight data from the Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) has been integrated, through a data interface, with a flight performance computer program to predict aviation emissions at altitude. The ADS-B, along with data from Mode-S, are then used to ‘fly’ selected long-range aircraft models (Airbus A380-841, A330-343 and A350-900) and one turboprop (ATR72). Over 2,500 flight trajectories

Flight delays may be decreased in a predictable way if the Weibull wind speed parameters of a runway, which are an important aspect of safety during the take-off and landing phases of aircraft, can be determined. One aim of this work is to determine the wind profile of Hasan Polatkan Airport (HPA) as a case study. Numerical methods for Weibull parameter determination perform better when the average

A state-of-the-art review of all the developments, standards and regulations associated with the use of major unmanned aircraft systems under development is presented. Requirements and constraints are identified by evaluating technologies specific to urban air mobility, considering equivalent levels of safety required by current and future civil aviation standards. Strategies, technologies and lessons

Emergency search and rescue on the sea is an important part of national emergency response for marine perils. Optimal route planning for maritime search and rescue is the key capability to reduce the searching time, improve the rescue efficiency, as well as guarantee the rescue target’s safety of life and property. The main scope of the searching route planning is to optimise the searching time and

A simple yet physically comprehensive and accurate method for the estimation of the cruise fuel burn rate of turbofan powered transport aircraft operating in a general atmosphere was developed in part 1. The method is built on previously published work showing that suitable normalisation reduces the governing relations to a set of near-universal curves. However, to apply the method to a specific aircraft

Turbulence and gusts cause variations in the aerodynamic forces and moments applied to the structure of aircraft, resulting in passenger discomfort and dynamic loads on the structure that it must be designed to support. By designing Gust Load Alleviation (GLA) systems, two objectives can be achieved: first, realizing higher passenger comfort; and second, reducing the dynamic structural loads, which

In the development process of high-speed aircraft, the head of the aircraft is subject to high temperatures and high speed flows, supporting the maximum heat flow and thus requiring a reliable cooling system. A new type of head cooling system is proposed herein. An internal flow channel model of the heat transfer in a ball head made from high-temperature alloy steel is constructed, then an experimental

Air traffic controller training is highly regulated but lacks prescribed common assessment criteria and methods to evaluate trainees at the level of basic training and consideration of how trainees in fluence flight efficiency. We investigated whether there is a correlation between two parameters, viz. the trainees’ assessment score and fuel consumption, obtained and calculated after real-time human-in-the-loop

This paper presents a framework to support decision-making in aircraft conceptual design optimisation under uncertainty. Emphasis is given to graphical visualisation methods capable of providing holistic yet intuitive relationships between design, objectives, feasibility and uncertainty spaces. Two concepts are introduced to allow interactive exploration of the effects of (1) target probability of

Accurate navigation is required in many Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) applications. In recent years, GNSS Precise Point Positioning (PPP) has been recognised as an efficient approach for providing precise positioning services. In contrast to the widely used Real-Time Kinematic (RTK), PPP is independent of reference stations, which greatly broadens its scope of application. However, the accuracy and