London, September 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Yocova, an end-to-end aviation innovation platform, reveals news about the Wings of Tomorrow initiative. Improving wing efficiency, technology, industrialization and production is a critical part of aviation’s future, not only for aircraft performance, but also for achieving aviation’s climate goals. For this, Airbus Chief Technology Officer Sabine Klauke and the leader of the Wing of Tomorrow program Sue partridge He recently revealed details from the program for the first time, and Yokohama was there to ask questions.
In addition to improvements in engine technology, airplane wings are the biggest lever aviators are pulling when it comes to increasing flight efficiency—and thereby reducing fuel costs and emissions, aiming for net zero in a recovering industry.
Airbus Klook explains that the Wing of Tomorrow program “looks at simplifying the wing, looking at an optimized integrated design, but also at new shapes and widths.”
“Above all,” she says, the program focuses on “the wing itself in design: we make it easy to assemble and focus on industrial development.”
The Wing of Tomorrow program itself is airframe agnostic: in other words, some of the technology can be used to make future improvements to aircraft flying today. Others may be modified for existing aircraft. And some of them may be very applicable to new airframes, especially those with different shapes, such as hydrogen-powered aircraft.
The program has three main objectives and three full-size displays
The first of the program’s three objectives is to improve performance: lower drag, optimize lift, dramatically improve fuel efficiency and possibly provide longer wings, including wingtip technology.
The second objective is around cost performance, which program leads Sue partridge It calls it “a high-performance carbon wing, to achieve weight reduction, at a low cost.” While the widespread use of carbon fiber and composite structures is becoming more common, using them in a narrow segment of the market, on a relatively large scale, requires more work.
The third objective revolves around technologies that need to be prototyped and matured so that Airbus can produce the wings in sufficient quantities for its future narrowbody ambitions and remove the wing as a bottleneck.
Filton as a design center (where Parrijm heads) and in Broughton North Wales As a manufacturing hub, Partridge explained, Airbus is driving those industry standards up, so instead of designing to design standards and seeing how you can do it, we’re understanding how you want to do it and then challenging the design standards to match that. And then we’re pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.
“We’re a technology program,” Partridge emphasized, “so we can really push the boundaries of what’s possible. It’s not a real wings program. It’s a technology program, and we’re there to really understand the art of what’s possible.”
Support for the program includes funding from the ATI program and the UK Department of Government’s Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. It also supports industry partnerships with over forty program providers in the UK and internationally and works with technocentres. Europe According to the UK National Composites Centre.
“The program is centered around three full-scale wing marchers, if you will,” explains Partridge. These will “explore the structural integration of technologies, armaments, industrial system acceleration capabilities, and structural challenges. And today we have reached the milestone of completing the first demonstration meeting.”
That first demo of the three tests installation and configuration technologies. The second wing is currently in assembly, and serves as a full-scale structural demonstration. The third is the run rate demonstration, which looks at the entire industrial system, the limitations of industrial technologies and the feasibility of automation packages.
The new industrial processes also eliminate the need to work in fuel tanks.
Tomorrow’s Wings is also a critical digital display.
Responding to questions from Yokova, Partridge He explains “Because Wings of Tomorrow is a great use case for us to test our digital capabilities if you like the physical technology program. They’re working hand-in-hand with our DDMS team – our digital design manufacturing and services team – for example, the digital continuum in the design to the manufacturing chain, digital “Looking at twins, developing skills like how to build a digital model of our assembly system so we can model the future. Production scenarios.”
A state-of-the-art experiment is also on the cards to understand how virtual technologies can best be used in physical inspection.
“The main benefits we’re seeing in what we’re doing right now is actually connecting that digital thread,” Partridge said, adding that Airbus “is achieving a true digital continuity of data throughout the process.” In design, testing, manufacturing and assembly, as well as managing equipment and friction on the shop floor, we are seeing some really great benefits coming to fruition.
Looking at the wider context, Yokova asked the CTO Sabine Klauke Where the Wing of Tomorrow is placed in the context of Airbus’ other digital and technology programs.
“We started this project in 2016,” Klauke He explains“And here is a step in the making [change] With a simple design, different materials, different integration functions, the digital chain that we test and as a key piece, the leading industrial integration.
“It’s completely consistent with that. [what] We have to optimize all the components of the plane, said Klauke Yokova. She explained that the airfreighter is doing research “specifically in terms of our next-generation propulsion technologies and so on.”[Wing of Tomorrow] It is completely in the chain of the whole technological research that we are doing.
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