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What’s Lincoln’s involvement in the EU FP7 MAAT Advanced Airship Programme?

Paul Stewart
The A380 features elements from the More Electric and Power Optimised Aircraft projects

Over the years, Profs Stewart and Bingham in the School of Engineering at the University of Lincoln have been involved in many projects related to the Power Optimised (POA) or More Electric (MEA) Aircraft, primarily in the areas of advanced electrical machines and actuators, power electronic energy converters, and electrical power system design and optimisation.

For example, the EU FP6 MOET (More Open Electrical Technologies) was a 66.61 million euro Integrated Project of 62 European Partners from 15 countries composed of universities, research centres a broad range of aircraft, system and component manufacturers representing the whole supply chain who are ready to set up the PbW (Power by Wire) standard.

In line with the vision 2020, MOET aimed to establish the new industrial standard for commercial aircraft electrical system design, which will directly contribute to strengthening the competitiveness of the aeronautical industry. MOET will also contribute reducing aircraft emissions and improving operational aircraft capacity. Recent National and European research activities and state of the art commercial aircraft developments, have launched more advanced approaches for on-board energy power management systems. These benefits have also been recognised in North America where this is being given special consideration. A step change is necessary to remove current air and hydraulic engine off-takes and further increase the electrical power generation capability.

This in itself will require significant changes to current electrical generation and network techniques. After Fly by wire, the Power by Wire concept (PbW) will enhance aircraft design and use by power source rationalisation and electrical power flexibility. This will be achieved by developing the necessary design principles, technologies and standards.

Over a 3-year period, MOET project objectives were:

– Validate scalable electrical networks up to 1MW considering new voltages and advanced concepts including system transformation of future air, actuation and electrical systems into all electrical solutions,
– Assess the PbW concept integration at aircraft level considering a more composite environment and the interfaces with the avionics world,
– Build a design environment aiming to design and validate standardised solutions and a coherent set of platforms open to the full supply chain, in order to develop an optimised high performance PbW concept.

Lincoln:Engineering and the FP7 MAAT Advanced Airship

In addition to involvement in other work packages, from September 2011, Lincoln:Engineering will be leading the ‘Energy and Propulsive Systems’ work package.

This Work Package is related to the fundamental energy production and propulsion system. It will analyze and define the optimal propulsion both for cruiser and feeder airships focusing on innovative systems which can overcome the traditional limitations of traditional propellers at high altitudes. The purpose of the WP3 Energy and Propulsive Systems is to produce:

  • parametric dimensioning methods for of the cruiser and feeder PV (photovoltaic) roofs
  • design of a thermo-physical system which control the volume and the temperature of the gas ballonets even in presence of ample thermal gradients
  • design of internal energy transport and distribution systems
  • design of energy storage system (electrolytic hydrogen and oxygen) and conversion by fuel cells
  • optimal propulsive systems design of cruiser and feeder, both for their common operative autonomous missions and for their integration inside the MAAT modular cruiser system.

Paper presentation timetable for ICMAT 2011, Singapore

Paul Stewart

International Conference on Materials for Advanced Technologies 26 June – 1 July 2011, SUNTEC, Singapore

Session Code J12.2 – Nanoscale Characterization

Session Chair(s) Jinchong Xiao Paper Details: J12.2-1
Topography of Features Machined Into Bisphenol A Polycarbonate Using Closed Thick Film Flowing Filtered Water Immersed KrF Excimer Laser Ablation
Colin DOWDING1, Jonathan LAWRENCE1, Paul STEWART2#+
1Faculty of Engineering, University of Lincoln, United Kingdom,

2School of Engineering, University of Lincoln, United Kingdom

Presentation Mode: Oral Date/Time Slot: Fri – 1 Jul 11 / 14:00 – 16:00 Presentation Room: 309 Presentation Length: 15 minutes Presentation Order: 1st in the timeslot

Session Code AA8 – Sensing / Probes

Session Chair(s) Vladimir Korzh Paper Details: AA8-2 (Invited)
Looking for Clues – Solving Complex Problems with Biologically Inspired Heuristics
Paul STEWART1#+, Jun CHEN1, David FERNIG2
1School of Engineering, University of Lincoln, United Kingdom,

2University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

Presentation Mode: Oral Date/Time Slot: Thu – 30 Jun 11 / 16:30 – 18:00 Presentation Room: 320 Presentation Length: 30 minutes Presentation Order: 2nd in the timeslot

Session Code AA3 – Photothermal Microscopy

Session Chair(s) Guo Hong Chen

Paper Details: AA3-2 Heparan Sulfate Determines the Modes of Diffusion of Fibroblast Growth Factor2 within the Pericellular Matrix

Laurence DUCHESNE1, Vivien OCTEAU2, Rachel BEARON3, Paul STEWART4, Jun CHEN5, Ian PRIOR6, Alison BECKETT6, Brahim LOUNIS2, David FERNIG7#+

1Institut du Fer à Moulin, UMR-S 839 INSERM, University Pierre and Marie Curie, France,

2University of Bordeaux, France,

3Mathematical Sciences, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom,

4School of Engineering, University of Lincoln, United Kingdom,

5Department of Engineering, University of Lincoln, United Kingdom,

6Physiological Laboratory, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom,

7Structural and Chemical biology, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

Presentation Mode: Oral Date/Time Slot: Mon – 27 Jun 11 / 16:30 – 18:00 Presentation Room:  320  Presentation Length: 15 minutes Presentation Order: 2nd in the timeslot

IEEE Technical Committee membership for Engineering’s Dr. Wing-Kuen Ling

Paul Stewart

Engineering’s Dr Wing-Kuen Ling (better known to us all as ‘Bingo’) has been given the prestigious invitation to join the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers’ Circuits and Systems Society Technical Committee on Nonlinear systems.

The IEEE is the world’s largest society for the advancement of technology.

The IEEE Circuits and Systems Society is the leading organization that promotes the advancement of the theory, analysis, design, tools, and implementation of circuits and systems. The field spans their theoretical foundations, applications, and architectures, as well as circuits and systems implementation of algorithms for signal and information processing.

Dr 'Bingo' Wing-Kuen Ling

The Society brings engineers, researchers, scientists and others involved in circuits and systems applications access to the industry’s most essential technical information, networking opportunities, career development tools and many other exclusive benefits.

Local members with similar technical interests engage in professional exchange through the Society’s 10 regional chapters in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Asia, Australia and the Pacific.

Energy recovery from landing aircraft

Paul Stewart

This is an EPSRC funded project:

  • EP/H004351/1: Feasibility Study, Energy Recovery from Landing Aircraft. Collaborating company: EADS Innovation Works

which is run by Prof Paul Stewart and Dr David Waugh in the School of Engineering at the University of Lincoln. It is one of a portfolio of projects awarded from the EPSRC Sandpit Low Carbon Airports. All the project researchers and PIs associated with this Sandpit are members of the Airport Energy Technologies Network (AETN), which is hosted here at Lincoln University.

Rationale

On account of the enormous pressures on numerous industries to cut down upon their carbon emissions it is not surprising to identify that one such industry is that of the airline industry. With aircraft transport becoming more widely used, along with aircraft becoming larger (for example the Airbus A380), it is possible for one to realize the large potential gains that recovering energy from aircraft would offer in terms of feeding that energy back into the national grid or storing the energy locally on the aircraft for use in recovered energy assisted take-off.

How much energy is associated with a landing aircraft?

We can make assumptions to illustrate the magnitude of kinetic energy available via a small commercial airliner:

Taking an Airbus A320 with landing mass m = 6.5×104 kg, with landing speed ν = 61.69 ms-1

we can calculate the kinetic energy E = 1.248 J.

Assuming a runway length of 1.2km gives us a linear acceleration of -1.59 ms-2

and a stopping time of 38.80s, which gives us a peak transferrable power of 3.2MW

Therefore, it is possible to realise that for a typical Airbus A320 the potential energy which could be recovered is very large with peak transferable powers of up to 3.2 MW being available. Furthermore, this becomes an even more attractive means when taking into account multiple landings as busy airports which leads to average transferable powers of up to 1 MW. In addition to this, one can see that over time aircraft will become bigger having even larger landing weight, such as the Airbus A380,  which will increase the potential power output by up to 10 times the figures stated here for the Airbus A320


Working the Bank Holiday

Paul Stewart
Thrifty Hire's biggest van parked up in Norwich

Staying over in Norwich tonight before the big event tomorrow, picking up the Free Piston Engine from Lotus Cars after its most recent modifications, fitting the new linear motor/generator.

I’m also meeting a representative from Toyota in Japan with Jamie Turner, Chief Engineer from Lotus, to discuss our free piston work.

I’m going to take the engine over to the ThinkTank in Lincoln tomorrow, where it will be stored in the interim until the move into an engine test cell in August.

Control Techniques, who supplied the electrical drives, will be re-commissioning the experimental rig.

DeVere Dunston Hall Norwich