APRIL 2005 BROADSHEET - Future of Aviation

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The club’s March event, “From Concorde to Silent Flight” was organised by CETC Committee Member John Batten.  57 attendees were treated to a fascinating evening of entertaining and informative talks.

The scene was ably set by John Hutchinson, for fifteen years a British Airways Concorde pilot. He treated us to his personal history of the last fifty years of aviation, from when he first learnt to fly with the RAF in Moosejaw, Saskatchewan in a single-engined Harvard, through his commercial flying career in 707s, 747s, VC10s and Concorde and now back to private flying in a single-engine plane. He clearly found Concorde a delight to fly, and was sadly disappointed by its early removal from service following the crash in Paris in 2000. An insider’s view of the many factors contributing to the disaster with this particular Air France plane was quite an eye-opener. John finished with his personal views of the future, which he believes will include radical new designs and – particularly when the sonic boom problem has been solved – a second generation of supersonic commercial aircraft in perhaps twenty years.  

This led neatly to the talk by Paul Collins, project manager for the Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI) Silent Aircraft Initiative. This is a three-year programme (currently at about the halfway mark) with funding of £2.3 million, which aims to prove a credible concept design for a new generation of aircraft meeting stringent noise reduction targets while still being commercially attractive. While “silent” may be an overstatement, such a plane would create a noise level at the airport periphery equivalent to a normal conversation. Although the current generation of aircraft still creates considerable noise nuisance, in real terms noise levels (adjusted for size) have been reduced by about 20 dB compared to early passenger jets. This programme is looking for a greater reduction than this, which would require a radical re-design of the airframe, engines and undercarriage into a so-called delta planform: a flying wing in effect. Although aircraft of this design may not be commercial for another 20-30 years, the noise-reduction technology developed can be expected to be deployed in a piecemeal way in the next generations of more conventional aircraft. Operational changes, such as steeper approach patterns, could also make a significant contribution to reduced noise pollution around airports.  

A vital step in the development of new aircraft is the building of scale models to test. Rotortech Ltd (based in Bourne) does just that, and we learned more about this sophisticated business from directors Rob Hewison and Brian Dempster. They are building two 1/12th scale models of an aircraft of the future, which are destined to fly in about eighteen months time. With an eight metre wingspan and using accurate, low-cost tools of the sort used for F1 motorsport, these models are built from ultra-lightweight carbon fibre composites and are accurately scaled for size, weight and inertia, working from 3D CAD designs. Use of such composite materials enables the production of complex, high strength, lightweight components for full-sized aircraft. Already the Airbus 380 is composed of about 30% composites, and the forthcoming Boeing 7E7 “Dreamliner” will use 50-60%.

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There are also other companies who give us generous help with specific meetings and services.

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