Simullacrum

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What do you guys think to flapless Aircrafts
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BAE Systems, in partnership with Manchester University has successfully flown two types of air vehicle demonstrating new concepts of flapless flow control. These model scale aircraft use blown air to control roll and pitch, replacing standard elevators and ailerons. They form the first of a set of planned demonstrators as part of the FLAVIIR (flapless air vehicle integrated industrial research) research programme to look at technologies for future unmanned air vehicles (UAVs).

The project is a five year programme funded jointly by BAE Systems and the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) and run from Cranfield University with nine other university partners.

The project covers all key aspects and technologies of the next generation UAV, namely aerodynamics, control systems, electromagnetics, manufacturing, materials/structures, numerical simulation and integration.

Being able to fly and control aircraft without conventional control surfaces will bring benefits to both military and civil aircraft.

In military jets the stealth characteristics will be enhanced by a reduction in edges and gaps that can increase radar cross section.

Additionally, the number of moving and electrical parts in both military and civil aircraft will be reduced which has clear implications for cost, reliability, weight, efficiency and maintenance.

The first vehicle, flown near Manchester, achieves roll control by blowing air from the trailing edge of one wing which in turn entrains the upper surface flow and so increases lift, thus producing roll.

The second vehicle, achieves pitch control by deflection of the main propulsive jet.

This deflection is achieved, not by mechanical moving parts, but by using secondary jets.

These jets exhaust from small slots at the upper and lower surface of the main jet and follow a curved surface.

This in turn entrains the main jet resulting in full thrust vectoring.

As the other technologies in the programme are researched further flapless vehicles will be developed and enhanced accordingly.

The next such vehicle to fly will be the integration of the roll and pitch control into a single (electric) aircraft and is due to happen before the end of 2005.

Research will then progress to demonstration using jet engines.

The ultimate aim of the programme is to then deliver a flying demonstrator vehicle which makes use of all the technologies being researched for a maintenance free, low cost UAV without conventional control surfaces and without performance penalty over conventional craft.

This is scheduled for completion in early 2009.

Project manager Philip Woods from BAE Systems Advanced Technology Centre explains: 'Future UAVs will be necessarily cheaper, more modular and will rely on designs that consider many cross-discipline interactions and trade-offs'.

'The FLAVIIR programme ensures that BAE Systems understands both of the emerging technologies and how they can fit together to deliver suitable systems in the future'.

The flapless air vehicle project is being managed from Cranfield University and includes nine other university partners: University of Leicester, University of Liverpool, University of Manchester, University of Nottingham, University of Southampton, University of Wales (Swansea), Warwick University, Warwick Manufacturing Group, University of York and Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine.

The project forms part of BAE Systems strategy to concentrate its funding on a few selected universities to increase company involvement in these university programmes, to facilitate a greater degree of co-operation between university partners and to include systems integration in the research agenda.

Attached Images

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Simullacrum

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just some more info
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'Three … two … one …" A few days ago a new kind of aircraft was launched into the cloudy skies over Eccles. When it landed in a field of stubble near the river Mersey, the plane marked a return to the flap-free aircraft of the Wright brothers and a glimpse of the next generation of "fluidic" aircraft.

The plane is one of two revolutionary models that have successfully flown over a cornfield near Manchester in the past few months, marking the first test flights of fluidic planes, which can turn, pitch and yaw without the need for control surfaces, and the first look at the future of aviation.

The remote-controlled craft alter air flows - and performance - with gusts, sheets and jets of air instead of flaps and ailerons and have been developed as part of a five-year, £6.2 million programme, funded jointly by BAE Systems and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, called Flaviir (flapless air vehicle integrated industrial research).

The model flapless aircraft have been developed by a 10-strong team of doctoral students - many working as volunteers - at Manchester University's Goldstein Aeronautical Research Laboratory. The aim is to come up with the next generation of unmanned air vehicles, which are used by the air force for reconnaissance, spying and strikes on key targets such as radar installations.

Overall, the programme is being managed from Cranfield University by Professor Paul Ivey and includes teams in Leicester, Liverpool, Nottingham, Southampton, Swansea, Warwick, York and London. The team hopes to deliver a flying fluidic demonstrator with a wingspan of 2.5 metres in early 2009; the aircraft is likely to be a modified version of a delta-wing plane called an Eclipse.

For their effort, Eccles's answer to the Wright brothers try out their designs with radio-controlled model craft to avoid aviation authority bureaucracy and red tape.

Size and weight constraints make modifying existing model aircraft "more challenging" than designing a full-size aircraft based on the new technologies, says Russell Sparks, 23, chief engineer of the Flaviir "seedcorn demonstrator" project. Although the initial aim is to make robot planes for reconnaissance and other uses, there is no reason fluidics could not move the largest of passenger jets, he says.

One fluidics approach developed at Manchester, called circulation control (CC), replaces conventional flaps by blowing air from the trailing edge of the wing. "This entrains the upper surface flow and so increases lift," says Stephen Michie, 22.

Although the model aircraft that flies with CC technology looks rather mundane, like a baby Cessna, it contains a modified turbocharger from a Peugeot 406 car and air ducting from the world's biggest aircraft, the Airbus A380, to help it to bank and turn by bleeding sheets of air from its wings. It was successfully tested in May.

The second method, called fluidic thrust vectoring (FTV), achieves what a Harrier jump jet does without moving parts: the direction of a jet can be changed with a secondary air flow, explains Ken Gill, 23. Graze the top of the main jet and the thrust moves up, graze the bottom and it shifts down.

In this case the demonstrator plane is a delta-wing electric ducted fan craft that is launched with a 30m bungee. The first test flight this month showed that the FTV concept worked; perhaps too well, since it climbed so fast that it stalled.

Both prototypes can fly without flaps: one eliminated the need for elevators but still uses ailerons, while the second needs no ailerons but still uses elevators. They will pave the way to a test flight of the world's first truly flapless plane, which will be more reliable and stealthy than today's aircraft, while remaining just as manoeuvrable.

The plane, called the Integrated Demonstrator and based on the stealth X45 design developed by Boeing, will combine both kinds of fluidic flow control. Wind tunnel tests are already under way and the aircraft is due to fly at the end of the year, says Andrew Lytton, 25.

Other fluidic concepts under development at Imperial College London are "synthetic jets", devices that mimic the movement of a loudspeaker or the way a smoker blows rings of smoke.

By putting hundreds of tiny synthetic jets on control surfaces, the aerodynamic engineers hope to use them to influence air flows over the plane to change the lift, drag and other features of its performance.

When it comes to fluidic planes, "no one has flown anything like this before", says Phil Woods of BAE Systems' Advanced Technology Centre. Being able to fly and control aircraft without conventional control surfaces will bring benefits to both military and civil aircraft, he says. "BAE Systems is excited by the possibilities."

For military jets the stealth characteristics - their invisibility - will be enhanced by a reduction in edges and gaps that can increase the chances of detection by radar. These stealth characteristics give the aircraft greater ability to penetrate an enemy's most sophisticated defences and threaten its most valued and heavily defended targets.

Additionally, the number of moving parts, both hydraulic and electric, in flap-free aircraft will be reduced, which will in turn boost reliability and efficiency while cutting costs and maintenance. "We can make a lighter and more robust aircraft," says Woods. "We can leave an aircraft for a year, get it out, plug it in and off it will go."

highsea

Very cool.

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