Engineering Fellowships for Growth: Materials by Design for Impact in Aerospace Engineering

Policy makers and regulatory bodies are demanding the aerospace industry reduces CO2 emission by 50% and NOx emission by 80% by 2020. In order to meet these drastic demands and ensure affordable air travel in the future, it is essential to make lighter aircraft which will use minimum fuel. The aerospace research community recognises the need to make a dramatic performance improvement and is considering several new aircraft concepts that move away from the conventional two-wing-one-fuselage configuration. This brings new challenges to aircraft design. A wing is a highly complex structure to design as it needs to consider the complex interaction between aerodynamics and structural behaviour. The current design practice is therefore very much based on using the previous successful design data. The challenge of departing from the conventional aircraft is that there are limited successful historical design data that is applicable to new concept aircraft. Once we have a wing design, however, there are sophisticated computational methods that analyse how the wing behaves under external flight conditions.

In fact, there has been a significant level of development in computational analysis methods taking advantage of growing computational power. A prime example of this is the recent development in the computational modelling of materials. Using this technology, new advanced materials can be created in half the time that traditional material development takes and the return on investment in computational materials research has been estimated at between 300 - 900%.

This fellowship is at the heart of developing sophisticated computational methods to design aircraft configurations that have not been considered before. The majority of the current methods analyse how a given material or structure responds to the external environment such as in flight at speed Mach 0.8, 38000 ft. What is different about the methods in this research is that they are inverse of the analysis methods: They will determine the best combination of advanced material and structural configuration based on the external environment and hence design the optimum wing for the given flight conditions.

My research approach is to represent the design problem as a set of mathematical functions and develop computational methods to find the optimum solution. The methods will therefore, find the optimum design for both materials and structural configuration at the same time. The outcome of this fellowship will provide engineers with a sophisticated tool to design complex aircraft structures. The tools will be developed and disseminated in a way that they can be used on a range of other complex engineering problems.

The UK has 17% of the global aerospace market share with revenue of £24 billion and is responsible for 3.6% national employment. With the international civil aerospace market forecast to grow to $4 trillion by 2030, the UK market has the opportunity to grow to $352 billion by 2030. It is critical that the UK develops this unique capability to ensure we maintain the market share of these high value products and processes and its economy has the opportunity for growth. Furthermore, the weight savings which will be made from optimum use of materials lead to meeting the emission targets, thus ensuring sustainable environment for the future generations.

(1) Industry and Economy
This research has a significant societal and economic impact for growth. The material industry in the UK has an annual turnover of around £197 billion and export values at £50 billion. Tailoring advanced materials for specific applications will lead to more high value products and processes which have strong potential to bring sustainable growth and high economic value to the UK. A variety of case studies have shown that the use of computational modelling and optimisation in materials and structural design reduced lead time to product by 50-80%. Taking this a step further to develop computational methods of simultaneously optimising both materials and structures will strengthen the UK as a global leader and enhance the national economy. Material innovation has been identified as particularly critical to the aerospace sector. The aerospace industry employs over 84100 (3.6% of national employment) with the revenue of £24 billion, 17% of the global market share, second only to the USA. The international civil aerospace industry is forecast to grow and to be worth approximately $4 trillion by 2030 and the UK has the opportunity to grow its market to $352 billion by 2030. The aerospace industry in the UK therefore, is said to have a "tremendous opportunities for growth" and is considered to be of strategic importance for the future of the UK economy. The unique capability to design revolutionary aircraft concepts will grow the national economy by creating jobs and ensuring a globally leading market position for the UK. In addition, the use of engineering optimisation to produce the lightest and the most efficient aircraft provides a route to minimise the overall fuel burn and contribute to the sustainable future.

(2) People and Society
Maintaining global leadership in high value products and process through materials and aerospace structures will attract manufacturing industry and increase the global market share, thus growing the UK economy. This will create more jobs and wealth which will ultimately benefit people and the society. In addition, the advanced materials and optimisation methods developed within this research will lead to the lightest aircraft and to low operating and through-life costs. With the increasing risks and uncertainties of fuel prices, this effort is critical in ensuring that future air travel remains affordable. The research also addresses the sustainability of air travel via low emissions through low fuel burn and optimising existing aircraft for re-use. This work will therefore benefit the environment and the future generations.

(3) Investigator and researchers
The potential of high impact scientific research in this fellowship provides an opportunity for myself and my researchers to become world leaders at the interface of materials and structures. This research integrates materials and structures which have traditionally been considered two distinct disciplines. Therefore the integrated expertise of materials and structures from a design perspective is rare and this unique expertise will firmly place me at the forefront of the state of the art and make my researchers distinctive and highly employable. The fellowship will lead to the identification of new research challenges and open up new opportunities to secure future funding from industry and funding bodies. Working closely with industrial partners provides a route for the researchers to make a direct impact in engineering industry and society.