Research and Flight Test of Advanced Turbulence Cancelling Technologies for Sustainable Urban and Regional Air Mobility (SmartWings2)

Project focus

High resolution remote turbulence measurement by wind lidar
High resolution turbulence measurement by distributed MEMS sensors
High capacity of turbulence suppression by Enhanced flaplets design
Integration and evaluation of turbulence load suppression in test flights

Description

Inflight turbulence is still an unsolved problem for aviation, impairing economy, safety and comfort of aircraft operation. Especially for light aircraft, such as for the emerging advanced air mobility (AAM) sector, low-level turbulence significantly impacts resource efficiency, quality of service and user acceptance. Measures taken by CS25 flight operators to avoid turbulence for comfort and safety reasons, such as re-routing to suboptimal flight levels and flight routes as well as suboptimal logistics, increase CO2 emissions, thus increasing the negative impact on the climate. Turbulence reduces comfort, safety and availability of service especially for light aircraft and AAM, which aims to provide a sustainable mobility alternative, where ground transportation capacities are limited.

Highest aviation turbulence in low-atmosphere and urban areas [Fernando 2010, Carpman 2011], impacting light aircraft operation, especially advanced air mobility such as low and fast fixed-wing flight of light and small aircraft.

Technology outline in SmartWings2 project: wind lidar, distributed turbulence sensors, and novel flaplets for turbulence load suppression (TLS), enabling passenger’s comfort and safety and highly efficient AAM in urban environment.

The SmartWings2 project aims enhanced turbulence load suppression (TLS) via new sensor technologies of wind lidar and distributed MEMS turbulence sensing, as well as a novel flaplet. The predecessor project SmartWings successfully demonstrated TLS in light aircraft by means of turbulence probes in front of the wing and actuation of predefleced flaps for direct lift control. Two new sensor technologies are developed to increase the turbulence anticipation time and resolution, and the high performance novel flaplet allows a better suppression of the strong turbulence at a high speed cruise. Last the developed sensors and flaplet are integrated and tested in a test flight, verifying the benefits of the developed technologies.