A six-seater, fixed-wing aircraft that operates silently, takes off and lands in confined urban areas, ticks all the green boxes through a combination of hybrid engines, solar panels and wind turbines, and has unmanned capabilities in case of a pilot emergency.
Does this sound too good to be true? UK-based start-up Faradair doesn’t think so. This small, Cotswolds-based company is in the process of gathering like-minded investors to help turn its dream of building a prototype from its bio-electric hybrid aircraft (BEHA) concept into reality as early as next year.
BEHA is an all-composite, triple-box-wing, hybrid multi-engine concept aircraft that Faradair managing director Neil Cloughley believes has the potential to offer “something unique” to the general aviation market. Further into the future, he envisions scaling up the design to create a 20-seat regional jet.
“I think there’s a market for intercity hopping for a 20-seat aircraft that could open an exciting opportunity,” says Cloughley.
In the GA sphere, he sees the aircraft fulfilling a range of uses, from flying taxi to police helicopter replacement to coastal patrol to anti-poaching device. The aircraft’s near-silent design means it “could be phenomenal” at creeping up on poachers and, while “this is not going to be a huge market”, Cloughley says he has already had discussions with “a well-known wildlife protection group” which he hopes will lead to some form of alliance announcement shortly.
BEHA takes its inspiration from the de Havilland Dragon Rapide, a 1930s biplane, but instead features a triple-box-wing design with solar ‘skins’ covering all flight surfaces. Unlike the Solar Impulse prototypes, BEHA’s solar panels will not be used to charge the electric motors – their purpose solely being to provide “additional trickle charge and to power the avionics”, says Cloughley.
Further into the future, Faradair envisions scaling up the design to create a 20-seat regional jet
Faradair
The rear-mounted wind turbine will be used for a similar purpose, although Cloughley declines to elaborate on its design, only saying: “Every man and his dog will tell you why [the wind turbine] can’t work because it creates too much drag. I can’t go into detail but we have a specific idea of how we’re going to use them.”
The aircraft’s design also features two electric and one biodiesel engine providing 600hp (450kW) of combined power. The biodiesel engine can remain idle on take-off and landing, enabling the aircraft to operate “24/7” because it would not be affected by noise restrictions, says Cloughley.
At 200hp each, BEHA’s electric engines will be “considerably more powerful” than the Airbus E-Fan prototype, although they follow “the same sort of design”. The first BEHA prototype will have fixed landing gear, but Cloughley says that “later variants would look at a different configuration”.
A key feature of the Faradair concept aircraft is that it will be able to perform short take-offs and landings, meaning it could potentially be used in congested urban areas. “We have no fixed figure for short take-offs and landings but we’re hoping it will be the shortest for a fixed-wing aircraft in the world,” says Cloughley. “The fact that it can get in and out of confined areas opens up interesting market opportunities.”
Range has yet to be decided, although Cloughley says “we’re ideally looking at 1,000nm [1,850km]”. With an anticipated cruising speed of 130-170kt (240-320km/h), BEHA is “not going to break any speed records”, he says, adding: “In time, we hope to build a pressurised aircraft.”
Faradair has teamed up with Cranfield University, which is about to start computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis on the design that will lead to its own “tweaked and refined” version in six to eight months.
In addition to its environmental credentials, Cloughley is hoping that BEHA will become “one of the safest” aircraft to operate. To this end, a number of safety precautions have been built into the design. For instance, in the event of the aircraft losing power during flight, Faradair says it will have “excellent glide capability”, as well as a “ballistic parachute recovery system”.
The carbon fibre fuselage, which Cloughley says will be made by “a very well-known motorsport manufacturer”, will include a “Formula 1-style crash tub” designed to minimise damage to the body of the aircraft in the event of a collision.
Triple-box-wings incorporate solar panels
Faradair
In addition to all of this, the prototype will have full unmanned capability. “If a pilot was flying a family from Paris to London and the pilot had a heart attack, he would be able to hit a panic button to alert an air traffic controller on the ground, who would then be able to control and land the aircraft,” says Cloughley.
The team behind the Faradair project “fully appreciate[s] the mountain to climb” to get it off the ground, chiefly the huge amounts of funding that need to be sourced. The fledgling company launched a crowdfunding initiative via the Internet late last year, but this failed to help it achieve its initial £20,000 ($30,200) target – itself a long way off from the £3-5 million needed to build the prototype.
The upside of this, says Cloughley, was that the company got its message into the public domain and learned some valuable lessons about fundraising. “We now have investors who are keen to get involved and a new direct investment scheme,” he notes.
Faradair is also optimistic about the possibility of being awarded a grant by the European Commission under the EU Clean Skies programme. “This is a real target for us,” says Cloughley. “We think we can get an EC grant because we fulfil so many of their criteria.”
High barriers to entry and extremely stringent safety certification procedures also stand between dream and reality, and Cloughley is hoping the involvement of Cranfield and other experienced parties will help it overcome these hurdles. “We’re working with Cranfield and they’ve been through these certification processes. We will most likely bring in other partners as well who have been through that process.”
The company aims to begin building its first prototype in 2016 which, after two to three years of testing, could result in it having “a production aircraft ready by 2020”.
Cloughley, whose background is in aviation asset trading and IT, has a very personal interest in seeing BEHA take off. Back in 1990, his father designed a UAV with a rhomboid wing configuration which Cloughley describes as being “way ahead of its time”. The UAV “never came to market” after backers “pulled the plug” on the business, and its assets were sold to a US company which “created the aircraft and won an $80 million contract”.
Furthermore, Cloughley himself encountered a similar scenario a decade later. In 2000 he formed a company called TechDawn, which he says partnered with Siemens and Sun Microsystems to develop a new tablet computer to enable mobile Internet access. Sun Microsystems decided not to pursue the project and TechDawn could not raise sufficient funds from venture capitalists to continue with it. Three years later, the Apple iPad was born and the rest is history.
Cloughley says he has learned a great deal from these past events, and is very much hoping it will be third time lucky for his BEHA venture.
Source: Flight International
