Phil Scott – Head of Design Engineering & Technology
9 June 2023
Last week witnessed the achievement of another critical milestone in the ASTRAL programme: delivery of the final airworthiness documentation; the compliance matrix and Declaration of Design Performance (DDP). This marks the culmination of all the engineering effort that has taken place on the programme over the last 7-8 years and follows on from the delivery of the last Nacelle hardware earlier in the year.
ASTRAL (Advanced Wing STructure for Rotorcraft Additional Lift) is an R&D project focused on Technology Development, which draws a parallel with the Aernnova Outcome project, in that they support the same Airbus Helicopter RACER platform. HAL, in partnership with the University of Nottingham, is responsible for the Design & Build of the novel wing structures for the helicopter. The RACER (Rapid And Cost Efficient Rotorcraft) program is sponsored by the European public-private partnership Clean Sky Joint Undertaking Joint Undertaking, whereby consortium members can recover a proportion of the funds they expend on the program. Along with the Wing of Tomorrow, the ASTRAL project dominates the HAL R&D portfolio, which collectively are aligned with the Aernnova Group Technology Plan.
The key technologies developed in this program will position and strengthen the business to be successful in winning new work on emerging aircraft platforms, as well as offer opportunities on existing serial production upgrades.
HAL and Aernnova have jointly delivered a significant part of the main airframe structure, all except the fuselage actually. The three companies involved are Aernnova Engineering and Composites, with the development and delivered of the rear fuselage and empennages for the OUTCOME project and Hamble Aerostructures Limited (HAL) as part of the ASTRAL project with the completion of the development and manufacture of the wings.
The main objective of ASTRAL is to produce a highly integrated and optimized prototype wing structure through the exploitation of advanced high-performance and improved sustainability composite and metallic material manufacturing processes. Consequently, the project has matured a number of technology streams including; near net shape fibre placement and one shot cure carbon composites, composite structural bonding, shape cast titanium metallics and additively manufactured organic thermoplastic polymers. Collectively these streams have delivered reduced component count, improved assembly times, material and process sustainability improvements and an overall wing level weight optimisation. The main wing assembly delivery milestone was achieved at the end of 2021, followed by the Fairings, Flaps and Nacelle structures delivery milestones in 2022. These deliveries have been supported by a successful full-scale static and fatigue test program conducted at CTA in Alava, Spain and series of stress dossiers to substantiate the structural integrity. Airbus Helicopters in Marignane, France, has progressively assembled the flight prototype since 2021 which will hopefully culminate in a first flight event by the end of 2023.
Additionally, during the five-year development phase in advanced manufacturing technologies and high-value design in line with the new technology-driven growth framework at HAL. To all this, we have to add delivery of the final airworthiness documentation; the compliance matrix and Declaration of Design Performance (DDP).
Additionally, during the five-year development phase in advanced manufacturing technologies and high-value design, HAL has implemented a number of Industry 4.0 practices including digital thread end-to-end model-based engineering throughout the design, analysis, simulation, manufacturing, assembly and inspection phases. Specifically, no 2D drawings were produced in the project and all design definition is contained within a 3D environment also known as Model Based Definition (MBD). Furthermore a digital thread was maintained for the composite part manufacturing processes. These advancements delivered significant development cost and schedule savings.
