SMAES

Smart Aircraft in Emergency Situations

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Ditching analysis is requested for large transport aircraft by EASA. The respective requirements are specified under § ‘’CS 25.801 Ditching’’. They are primarily devoted to a minimisation of risks for immediate injuries and the provision of fair chances for an evacuation. A significant part of average air travel is over water and historically a planned or unplanned water-landing event occurs grossly speaking every 5 years. This proposal directly addresses areas '7.1.3.3: Aircraft Safety' and “7.1.4.1: Aircraft Development Cost”. The primary outcome of the SMAES project will be advanced methodologies and simulation tools to support aircraft development from pre-project phase to certification. These will enhance future innovation in aircraft design through ensuring that innovative designs are compliant with safety requirements The key developments addressed in the work programme are: 1. Improved models for the calculation of ditching loads including both analytical and detailed fluid dynamics models. Inclusion of the effects of the complex flow physics in ditching is critical to prediction of ditching loads. 2. Reliable and predictive aircraft models for structural behaviour under dynamic fluid loads. 3. Demonstration of the methods on representative future aircraft design concepts. The consortium brings together aircraft manufacturers, analysis software developers, research organisations and universities. Together the partners form a strong team covering the required expertise in aircraft design, numerical methods and simulation, ditching analysis and supporting experimental methods to achieve the project objectives.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Aeroplanes are sometimes forced to land on water in emergency situations, posing a major threat to the livelihood of passengers and crew. Improved simulations of structure-fluid interactions in such landings will improve designs for safety.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Two thirds of our planet's surface is water, and numerous airports around the world are close to bodies of water. It is thus vital to consider the possibility of ditching, a controlled emergency landing of an aircraft on water, when designing current and future aircraft.

The EU-funded project 'Smart aircraft in emergency situations' (http://www.smaes.eu/ (SMAES)) is working on improving chances of success. This is being achieved with the support of a powerful consortium of aircraft manufacturers, software developers, universities and research organisations.

The project team has greatly improved models to calculate ditching load and fluid dynamics, such as the effects of waves on landing attempts. Scientists are simulating both overall aircraft motion during ditching as well as structural behaviour to eventually refine future aircraft design. They are especially interested in the behaviour of new composites that are more brittle than traditionally used metallic structures.

Multi-scale modelling is allowing treatment of localised structural deformation and failure within explicit whole aircraft models. Particular care is given to reducing the computational load of models while enhancing the accuracy of predictions.

So far, significant progress has been achieved in developing semi-analytical analysis tools and modelling approaches. Scientists have analysed test problems for verification of various approaches and tools and defined the industrial demonstration cases. In addition, the team established a new experimental high-speed water impact facility and completed all 40 metre-per-second elastic impact tests.

In the long run, SMAES models, tools and the experimental facility are expected to help radically improve the design process. In more specific terms, project results will reduce design and test costs, increasing innovation to create safer, lighter and less expensive structures.

Apart from upgrading safety, SMAES is expected to contribute to the competitiveness and primacy of the European aeronautics industry, thanks to an array of novel tools for aircraft design. Finally, improved understanding of the complex physical phenomena that occur during aircraft ditching will be useful in other structure-fluid applications as well. These include landing rotorcraft on water and high-speed planing in which a water vessel is largely supported by hydrodynamic lift rather than buoyancy.