With an annual growth in travel demand of about 5% globally, managing the environmental impact is a challenge. In 2019, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) issued emission reduction targets, including well-to-wake greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduced at least 50% from 2005 levels by 2050. This discusses several technologies from an aircraft design perspective that can contribute to achieving these targets. One thing is certain: aircraft will look different in the future. The Transonic Truss-Braced Wing and Flying V configurations are promising significant efficiency improvements over conventional configurations. Electric propulsion, in various architectures, is becoming a feasible option for general aviation and commuter aircraft. It will be a growing field of aviation with zero-emissions flight and opportunities for special missions. Lastly, this paper discusses methods and design processes that include all relevant disciplines to ensure that the aircraft is optimised as a complete system. While empirical methods are essential for initial design, Multidisciplinary Design Optimisation (MDO) incorporates models and simulations integrated in an optimisation environment to capture critical trade-offs. Concurrent design places domain experts in one site to facilitate collaboration, interaction, and joint decision-making, and to ensure all disciplines are equally considered. It is supported by a Collaborative Design Facility (CDF), an information technology facility with connected hardware and software tools for design analysis.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) audits its Member States for safety oversight and monitors its Effective Implementation (EI). The global average EI was 68.83% in 2019, with 46% audited Member States achieving 75% EI (2022 target); however, an ICAO (2016 – 2018) audit highlighted six Annex 13 non-compliance issues. One issue was that more than 60% of Member States do not have a comprehensive and detailed investigator training program, contributing to many shortcomings that include a lack of essential and volatile evidence preservation, investigation management, investigation reporting and/or safety recommendations. This paper proposes an Expert System that captures knowledge in aircraft accident investigation generated over many years and allows aircraft investigators to share, access and interrogate accumulated knowledge to support the aircraft accident investigation process. The Expert System will improve the evidence analysing timeline, conclusion consistency and accuracy and support the on-the-job “field” training of evidence analysis through self-discovery.

Autonomous shipboard launching of UAVs in a hostile atmospheric environment would greatly extend the usefulness of these aircraft. Currently a majority of UAVs are remotely launched under limited conditions. This paper presents control and guidance strategies that will allow autonomous launching under a much greater set of atmospheric hazards. Two modern control techniques are compared for use in this case. The main problem when dealing with low speed UAVs is found to be high steady winds causing stall. Several strategies are presented that can allow stall to be avoided and recovered.

Thermopile sensors detect electromagnetic radiation as a function of the object’s temperature. Because there is a temperature difference between the cold ground and the warm sky, these sensors could be used to detect the horizon and thus be used as a reference to stabilise a small aircraft, such as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in visual meteorological conditions (VMC). To verify this hypothesis, a system has been developed providing horizon detection using thermopile sensors to stabilise an R/C model aircraft. The aircraft has gone through a number of flight trials using remote control to enable and disable the stabilisation system. During the flight trials the aircraft was set at various attitudes when the system was enabled. The stabilisation system was able to assume wing level under various bank angles and weather conditions with minimum overshoot and oscillation.

Although the system shows good performance during flight trials, most of the original design was done using trial and error. A design tool was needed to implement further improvements to the system and to efficiently implement it on other aircraft. This required a good understanding of the physical behaviour of the system and the interaction between the sensors, aircraft and the environment. A mathematical model of the overall system was developed using the MATLAB/Simulink environment to simulate the behaviour of the system under various conditions. The simulation results were then compared with actual flight experiments. This paper describes the modelling techniques used for the different system components and the results of the simulation compared to actual flight trials.

The blended wing-body configuration holds a major structural design challenge at the centre-body where the structure must support both wing bending loads and internal cabin pressure. A membrane approach is proposed which decouples the loads to allow their resistance by two independent structures: an inner membrane for cabin pressure and an outer structure to resist wing loads. A columned multi-bubble fuselage is proposed for the inner membrane structure, which are multispherical configuration to efficiently withstand the pressure loads. Considering this configuration, the carry-through structure can be designed and optimised. Finite element results show a significant reduction of stress level in this design over that for a conventional multi-bubble fuselage. Up to 30% weight reduction is achieved for a military cargo application that requires an extensive area with no structural interruption. For the outer carry-through structure, the topology and shape optimisations of finite element models were performed on the given design domain. The results from the shape and topology optimisations were complementary demonstrating a consistent design approach. The optimisation theory is briefly presented along with the results.