Consultant, spokesperson and all-round aerospace industry bellwether, Neil Calder, director of Engineered Capabilities casts a look over the major developments that took place in the aerospace industry during 2023.
2023 has seen significant developments in aerospace technology and in manufacturing supply chain capabilities. A number of key development projects have concluded or delivered significant outputs within the last year. Many of these have been the culmination of decade-long strategic initiatives so not exactly overnight successes but the last year has still seen a vintage crop of results.
Environmental and economic factors are driving change in aerospace products and in the manufacture of these at an arguably higher rate than ever before and the UK Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) and European Commission Clean Aviation strategic development programmes have provided much of the vision and structure to this. Notable and persistent themes are in sustainability and digitalisation, addressing energy efficiency, materials circularity, and digital connectivity in manufacturing supply chains.
Back in March, Nottingham University opened its Omnifactory, publicly inaugurated by Brian Halliday, managing director of Siemens Digital Industries. This is a facility which challenges the traditional concepts of hard tooling in the assembly of high tolerance structures for aerospace and other applications sectors in a connected agile manufacturing ecosystem.
Critical to this was the assumption of the system integrator role by the university, a function which would have been hard to access from within the production equipment supply base which is appropriately configured to respond to well-expressed customer demands for production line solutions, but the level of variability and agility expected from the Omnifactory exceeded this.
The outcome is an advancement in the state-of-the-art relating to the digital backbone for aerostructure component assembly and this is already providing a number of other projects with the facility for the development of contributory and beneficiary manufacturing technologies.
Last July, Airbus opened its Wing Technology Development Centre in Filton. This represents only the (wing) tip of the iceberg, however, as the Wing of Tomorrow (WoT) programme has been running for nearly ten years before delivering its first 17m wing demonstrator last year. The programme expects ultimately to create three full-scale wing demonstrators aimed at: static structural test; full equipping; and what is being termed ‘run@rate’. Rate increase continues to be a strong part of the narrative from Airbus on what it expects from its supply chain, with published intentions of 65 existing single aisle aircraft per month by the end 2024 and 75 in 2026. Some of the learning from the WoT work is feeding forwards into making this possible.
In the same month, ZeroAvia successfully completed the initial flight test campaign of its ZA600 powertrain linking fuel cell, electric motor and inverter technologies. Using a modified Do228 at Kemble they are pushing the boundaries of hydrogen electric propulsion. Their projected configurations of hydrogen electric propulsion extend to 100+ seater aircraft. The ZeroAvia work is representative of a large body of engineering and innovation in non-hydrocarbon powertrains which draws in a spectrum of industrial and government actors across multiple sectors.
In November, Rolls-Royce’s UltraFan ultrahigh bypass ratio engine programme achieved a major milestone – also with the full-scale and maximum power test in the Testbed 80 facility created specifically for this and notably using 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). This programme also has been in action for a decade, supported by a number of national and European strategic innovation funds, and the latest test is the culmination of detailed development projects in contributary technologies e.g. very high power gearboxes, carbon fibre/titanium wide chord fan blades, high efficiency engine core, etc.
At the ATI Conference held in November, CTOs of aerospace primes acknowledged that innovations in electrification and H2 will come from smaller players within their supply chain. It is also clear that this will involve significant crossovers with adjacent industrial sectors seeking to decarbonise power trains, transport and energy infrastructure.
neil@engineeredcapabilities.co.uk
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