Airplane design; a must in aeronautical engineering education

The trend towards European academic homogenisation, budget cuts and other threats lead to shrinking the time for the aeronautical engineering programs. Some topics, knowledge and skills will have no place in future curricula. The paper advocates for keeping airplane design as a corner stone of the aeronautical engineering syllabi since it is the only topic that educates students in synthesis perspective, binds many independent disciplines and counterbalances18 years of well developed analytical mentality

Effect of uncommon exit location in the emergency evacuation of transport airplanes

The objective of the present paper is to show the effect of uncommon exit arrangement in the evacuation process of narrow-body airliners, from the point of view of emergency evacuation certification, using the ETSIA model. Two main possibilities will be considered: large longitudinal shifting of the main embarking/disembarking doors; and suppression of some over-the-wing exits

Optimizacion of planform and cruise conditions of a transport flying wing

The flying wing is a promising concept for the mid long-term commercial aviation. After the previously published conceptual design of a 300-seat class flying wing, the present article carries out a parametric analysis to optimize its planform and analyse the suitable cruise conditions to achieve the highest efficiency of such configuration. The figures of merit chosen for the optimization are the direct operating cost and the maximum take-off weight per passenger, for a specified constant range of 10 000 km. The design has to respect five relevant constraints: wingspan (limited to 80 m), cabin width, wing tip chord, number of passengers, and cruise lift coefficient. The optimum aircraft fulfilling all constraints cruises at 45 000–47 000 ft and M = 0.82, has an aspect ratio of 6.3 and taper ratio of 0.10, and carries about 280 passengers in three-class seating. This aircraft is about 20 per cent more efficient than conventional wide bodies of similar size, in terms of trip fuel

Cost-range trade-off in the design and operation of long range transport airplanes

The objective of this study is to show the environmental and operating cost savings that could be achieved if long range transport aircraft were designed for shorter ranges; obviously at the drawback of longer trip duration, for the inevitable intermediate stop. The maximum take-off weight and operating empty weight, main design variables of transport airplanes, would be greatly reduced. However, it would be impossible to take full advantage of this procedure for, on the one hand, it would be difficult to find a suitable airport at the exact midpoint and, moreover, there would be a certain increase in the total distance because of the deviation. The overall result will depend on the length of the route, the technology level (range factor and operating empty weight fraction with respect to maximum take-off weight), and other variables that will be discussed. Only for very long routes and/or very high fuel cost the shorter design range case represents a meaningful saving with respect to the non-stop flight

Effects of the design mismatch between aircraft capabilities and actual aircraft utilization

Air routes are largely determined by the interaction of geographical, political, economic and social factors. And airlines use their aircraft for a diversity of missions. Because of both factors the actual utilization of transport aircraft is well inside the payload-range envelope, which means that the designs are oversized for most flights. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the savings that could be achieved if transport aircraft were designed for shorter ranges; i.e., closer to the actual utilization pattern. In this design scenario, the maximum take-off weight and the operating empty weight would be remarkably reduced. This would lead to a reduction in aircraft price, trip fuel, maintenance cost, and landing and navigation charges as well as environmental impact. Direct operating cost as will be used as figure of merit of the reduced range approach

International trade in corals

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:98/23269 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo