Browse Topic: Freighter aircraft
The United Kingdom's convertible rotorcraft studies of the 1960s and early 1970s represent a systematic effort to combine vertical take-off and landing capability of helicopters with the speed and efficiency of fixed-wing transport aircraft. Conducted primarily by Westland Helicopters under the Short Range Transport (SRT) programme, these investigations explored both tiltrotor and tiltwing configurations for civil and military applications. Early work focused on the WE-01 tiltrotor, conceived as a research and demonstrator aircraft to investigate transition aerodynamics, control integration, and rotor–wing interactions, and subsequently scaled to the larger WE-02, intended for intercity and tactical transport missions. In parallel, Westland pursued the more ambitious WG.22 tiltwing, a 100-seat intercity VTOL transport incorporating high-incidence stall wing technology, large prop-rotors, and mechanically scheduled flight controls to ensure benign handling through transition. Although none of these aircraft were built, the studies addressed aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, flight controls, noise, and socio-economic viability with exceptional depth. Shaping the future through the past, this paper revisits Westland's early involvement in tiltrotor and tiltwing research, with the aim of assessing the technical maturity of these configurations and evaluating their lasting relevance to contemporary vertical lift aircraft design.
The rapid expansion of electric aviation and eVTOL operations introduces tightly coupled challenges related to energy‑constrained aircraft design, battery and thermal management, mission planning, and the generation of certification‑relevant evidence. This paper presents an integrated simulation workflow developed by AVL, Unisphere, and blueflite that combines high‑fidelity electric powertrain and battery models with a guidance‑level, digital‑twin‑based 4‑D trajectory simulation driven by historical weather and operational constraints. At each mission time step, the trajectory layer provides time‑resolved environmental and routing conditions, while the system‑level models compute instantaneous power demand, state‑of‑charge evolution, and thermal response, enabling mission feasibility assessment under realistic wind, temperature, and airspace effects. The workflow is calibrated and validated using flight telemetry from blueflite's active eVTOL cargo aircraft development, ensuring alignment between simulation assumptions and real‑world mission execution. The validated framework is subsequently applied to seasonal route studies and large‑scale virtual flight campaigns spanning multiple regions and years, enabling statistically robust assessment of energy margins, thermal behavior, and mission‑duration variability. The results demonstrate how integrated, traceable simulation can bridge conceptual design and real‑world electric flight operations, supporting informed decision‑making by OEMs and operators in aircraft design, validation, and deployment planning.
The Primary Author has been involved in Army Aviation Development and Acquisition since the Utility Tactical Transport Aircraft System (UTTAS), Advanced Attack Helicopter (AAH), Army Helicopter Improvement Program (AHIP), and Light Helicopter Experimental (LHX) Programs in the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. The first three of these programs successfully made it to production aircraft, while the LHX became the RAH-66 Comanche and was canceled primarily due to technical problems and cost overruns. The initiation of the next phase by the Army Aviation Development (ADD) Directorate for Future Vertical Lift (FVL) did not occur until the beginning of the 2015-2000 timeframe. This was 35 years since the last Army Aviation Development in 1980. To help sustain this FVL development, the Primary Author led, oversaw, and helped conduct a program through the National Rotorcraft Technology Center (NRTC) in the 2015-2016 timeframe. It was called the Development Assurance Value-Based Acquisition (DAVBA) Program1. It included the following team members: Georgia Tech, University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH), Dassault Systèmes, and Clausewitz Technology. The Army ADD plan funded it for FY2015- 2016 through the NRTC. The objectives were to provide the Future Vertical Lift (FVL) Program with a Development Assurance for Airworthiness Qualification and a Value-Based Acquisition Overall Evaluation Criterion (OEC) for FARA and FLRAA concepts.. However, Army Aviation only funded the first phase in 2015, as FVL funds were then transferred to the new Army Futures Command. This paper will illustrate how DAVBA could have saved the Future Attack and Reconnaissance Aircraft Program (FARA) Program as well as providing a more cost effective Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) Program.
Performing highly representative tests of aircraft equipment is a critical feature for gaining utmost confidence on their ability to perform flawlessly in flight under the entire spectrum of operating conditions. This can also contribute to accelerate the certification process of a new equipment. A research project (E-LISA) was performed in recent years, as part of the European funded Clean Sky 2 framework, with the objective of building an innovative facility for testing an electrically actuated landing gear and brake for a small air transport. The project eventually led to the development and construction of an Iron Bird able to reproduce in a realistic and comprehensive way a full variety of landing test cases consistent with certification specifications and landing histories available in the repository of the airframer. The Iron Bird that was eventually developed is a multi-functional intelligent and easy reconfigurable facility integrating hardware and software allowing to perform a full verification and validation of an electrically actuated landing gear and brake over the representative operating conditions, and under normal, degraded and faulty conditions.
The purpose of this SAE Aerospace Standard (AS) is to standardize the basic design, performance, and testing requirements for “Cargo Stoppers” cargo tie-down accessories to be used in conjunction with approved restraint straps meeting AS5385C (TSO C-172) requirements.
This document is applicable to commercial and military aircraft fuel quantity indication systems. It is intended to give guidance for system design and installation. It describes key areas to be considered in the design of a modern fuel system and builds upon experiences gained in the industry in the last 10 years.
Conventional high-lift systems allow transport aircraft to safely operate at low speeds for landing and takeoff. These high-lift devices, such as Fowler flaps, are complex, heavy, and have high part counts. Fowler flap mechanisms also protrude externally under the wings, requiring external fairings, which increase cruise drag. Simple-hinged flaps are less complex, and an ideal choice for low-drag cruise efficiency. However, simple-hinged flaps require high flap deflections to achieve lift comparable to Fowler flaps. These flap deflections cause severe adverse pressure gradients, which generate flow separation that is difficult to control. In response to these challenges, NASA developed the High Efficiency Low Power (HELP) active flow control (AFC) system.
This SAE Aerospace Recommended Practice recommends general criteria for the development and installation of an aircraft emergency signal system to permit any crew member (flight or cabin) to inform all other crew members that an emergency evacuation situation exists and that an evacuation has been or should be immediately started.
This SAE Aerospace Information Report provides a general discussion on gaseous breathing oxygen and oxygen equipment for use on commercial aircraft. Other types of oxygen systems are mentioned to assist in this discussion. For detailed information on systems other than gaseous, refer to the appropriate section of AIR825.
The civil aircraft nosewheel is clamped, lifted, and retained through the pick-up and holding system of the towbarless towing vehicle (TLTV), and the aircraft may be moved from the parking position to an adjacent one, the taxiway, a maintenance hangar, a location near the active runway, or conversely only with the power of the TLTV. The TLTV interfacing with the nose-landing gear of civil transport aircraft for the long-distance towing operations at a high speed could be defined as a towbarless aircraft taxiing system (TLATS). The dynamic loads induced by the system vibration may cause damage or reduce the certified safe-life limit of the nose-landing gear or the TLTV when the towing speed increases up to 40 km/h during the towing operations due to the maximum ramp weight of a heavy aircraft. In this article, the vibration differential equations for the TLATS are derived based on Newton’s second law, and the corresponding matrix formulas are obtained through Laplace transforms. The vibration transmissibilities of the system motion responses to the harmonic road input are evaluated in terms of the frequency response functions (FRFs) in the frequency domain. The simulations are conducted to compare the ride comforts between the TLTV at a low speed of 10 km/h and that at 40 km/h under the random and bump road excitations, respectively. Further, the effects of the aircraft mass, driver seat stiffness coefficient, TLTV center of gravity (CG) location, and the driver seat location on system vibration characteristics in both time and frequency domains are investigated. The results show that the TLTV CG location, the driver seatstiffness coefficient, and location are relatively sensitive to a TLATS’s ride comfort, which is significant to the TLTV manufacturer.
This Aerospace Information Report provides a general discussion on gaseous breathing oxygen and oxygen equipment for use on commercial aircraft. Other types of oxygen systems are mentioned to assist in this discussion. For detailed information on systems other than gaseous, reference the appropriate section of AIR825.
The design of high lift device has great importance in development of transport aircraft, for both manufacturers and operators. With this motivation, a preliminary structural design of a 4-bar mechanism as an actuator of a single-slotted Fowler flap was developed. Fundamental concepts about the subject, such as overlap, gap and Fowler motion, was presented. Aiming the aerodynamic requirements, the mechanism was synthesized in order to reach three critical points: cruise, landing and take-off. For landing and take-off conditions, the loads were estimated and applied on the flaps to evaluate and to size the linkage system. The kinematics and kinetics of the movement was studied by two methods: analytical and numerical by multibody simulation. In order to refine the sizing, a finite element analysis was employed to determine the margins of safety and to drive optimization studies. Thus, with static and fatigue analysis performed and safety margins calculated, the topological optimization was performed in two components, achieving a reduction of 29.3% (1.9 kg) in the first and 38.3% (2.0 kg) in the second, representing 13.46% in the total mass of the system.
This section presents the basic equations for computing ice protection requirements for nontransparent and transparent surfaces and for fog and frost protection of windshields. Simplified graphical presentations suitable for preliminary design and a description of various types of ice, fog, frost, and rain protection systems are also presented.
Items per page:
50
1 – 50 of 252