Academia has hundreds of engineers with the time and a burning desire to change the way people fly. Industry can provide the cash
JUSTIN WASTNAGE / MUNICH AND LONDON
Birds' wings react to minute air conditions. Muscles control the central shaft on the tail and wing feathers to automatically counter all thermals, gusts and turbulence. Some birds can flatten their feathers, silencing the noise of approach as they attack prey. Replicating all of these instincts into aeronautical technology is one of Airbus' goals.
To produce this kind of morphing wing technology within two decades, the company is funding extensive research - with much of it being done by postgraduate students at universities across Europe.
On the surface, this type of upstream research poses a win-win situation for all involved. The large players have hurdles they must overcome, preferably two or three at a time, and have the money to do so, but they lack manpower. For the universities involved, such projects are undeniably attractive.
Plus, they have hundreds of engineering experts with the available time and a burning desire to change the way people fly, but little cash. Universities can therefore bid for some of the choicest parts of new product development, certain in the knowledge that they are unlikely to be undercut on price. "The universities' core business is research, ours is production. We get excellent expertise at a low cost, which helps our profitability, and they get to see their projects in the air," says Alexis Boccard, Eurocopter France's research manager.
Co-operation
Indeed, cost aside, Prof Udo Müller, Airbus' national research and development (R&D) representative for Germany sees two major benefits - in theory - in co-operating closely with universities. First, the employability of students who work on specific aerospace projects is increased since their experience reflects the state of the industry. Second is technology transfer. Universities get to know and gear projects around industry hot topics while engineering firms are given incidental access to spin-off technology from students' pet projects. Several airframe manufacturers in Wichita, Kansas, including Boeing, Cessna and Bombardier, benefited from a just such an exploitation of current links, when they were given access to the composites behaviour database compiled by Wichita State University's National Institute for Aviation Research, for a publicly funded NASA project to develop a crashworthy all-composites aeroplane.
The real world, however, is often more complex, with wrangles over intellectual property, prestige and irrational work patterns thrashed out before every contract. Universities have learnt to become business managers and maximise inward investment, while airframe manufacturers often find themselves frustrated with students' sometimes lackadaisical approach to milestones and progress reports.
It is also worth considering that this private-public partnership model may work well in the West, but in some economies, universities are the sole agencies capable of doing research. Zdobyslaw Goraj, associate dean and course director at Warsaw University of Technology's faculty of power and aeronautical engineering, points out: "It is more important for us to finance projects in the short term and maintain the links with industry that we have established over four decades than to drop them because the Polish industry is undergoing a temporary downturn." Over time, Goraj says, with BAE Systems and other companies about to open production plants in Poland, his school hopes to build on its ongoing studies and attract high-profile projects involving the Hawk trainer and multirole aircraft that will accompany the country's harmonisation with NATO.
The manner in which aerospace companies manage their research is usually multilayered. EADS, for example, carries out research on four levels: at universities, at government research labs, at EADS' European labs and then through small internal projects within each division.
Eurocopter is typical of such an EADS division, having links with universities on a local, national and European level. Many research projects combine outsourced 'grunt' work with higher-profile studies. For example, in Marseilles, Eurocopter works with the Institut Supérieure des Physique Industrielle de Marseille in looking into new processes for repairing composites. But much of this work is trawling through databases, rather than hands-on. In contrast, down the road at the more prestigious Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers (Ensam) in Aix-en-Provence, the helicopter firm is doing detailed simulations of fatigue on the behaviour of surface metals. Although the Ensam students are doing more hands-on research, their Marseilles-based peers will be motivated by the experience of solving real-life problems that will take to the air.
Knowledge pool
As research is carried out in response to changing market conditions, it is reasonable that industry taps into the universities' knowledge pool. When Eurocopter identified the development of reduced-noise 'neighbour-friendly' helicopters as essential to continued success, it invested in research into active rotor blades. Flaps on the trailing edge of the newly developed blade change lift, reducing the vortex through which each following blade has to pass, reducing noise.
These blades, due to go into production by 2004, show how a problem can be identified and solved as the result of wide scale research. Often, however, so much research is being done that it can be difficult to manage, admits Uwe Bierfischer, head of technical communications at EADS. He says that research teams are still commissioned when the potential is unknown. EADS chief technologists roam European universities acting as talent scouts, assessing new ideas for possible industrial value.
Upstream research reflects the future thinking of the aircraft industry. For example, much of Airbus' research into wing strength has to do with building aircraft strong enough to handle the various demands of a projected three-fold increase in seat miles by 2020. "With smarter take-offs and landings, then we could triple throughput at terminals," says Müller.
Globally, there is much research into unmanned air vehicles (UAVs). For example, the Technical University of Munich (TUM)'s Unmanned Lehrstuhl für Luftfahrttechnik Research Aircraft (Ulltra) has attracted the attention of EADS Military, which is interested in the postgraduate students' work on navigation control systems, rather than the 4m (13ft) span model aircraft they are tinkering with. Since EADS knows that it must start to look seriously at unmanned fighter aircraft, but has relatively little knowledge in-house, it can do some relatively inexpensive initial research now - at c500,000 ($427,204) a year.
This fits with moves in the USA, where, according to the US Aerospace Industries Association's director of space policy, Bruce Mahone, "attitude to warfare has changed so much that human casualties are no longer acceptable and air forces will demand sophisticated unmanned vehicles."
Trump card
Although industry usually holds the upper hand in any talks, universities still hold one or two trump cards. Sometimes, for example, the investment they have made into their facilities means that companies have little choice but to commission the establishment with the right equipment. For example, when PZL Okecie needed to test the anti-spin properties of the PZL 112 'Junior' light aircraft, it had to turn to the Warsaw University of Technology, as its has the only vertical wind tunnel in Poland. But once acquired, universities can re-utilise expensive bits of kit in a way that companies could not. So it is that a TUM facility that was last used to research wake vortices of super-transporter cargo aircraft for Airbus is now being used by BMW to test the natural ventilation architecture for its new office buildings in Munich.
Negotiations can get stymied over intellectual property rights. The university involved typically wants the fruits of its labours to enter the public domain, while the participating companies concerned usually want complete secrecy. The end result depends on how much the research is worth. "The research we are doing into adaptive structures would give us several years' head start on the competition. Why would we want to publish that?" asks Müller. The end result is often a compromise: The first year everything is secret, then after that it is published "if the partner agrees", says Prof Dieter Schmitt, dean of TUM's aeronautics college. This really means whether the partner pays to keep it secret longer, after which time the geometry is 'mislaid' or 'accidentally' left off published results.
If copyright is an inconvenience for manufacturers, still deeper concerns lie within many relationships. Universities take about a third longer to complete research, because of personnel (students) changes and a more fluid interpretation of deadlines. They are also reluctant to offer any guarantees about the outcomes of research. For this reason, large aerospace firms have been keen to shift some application development work to the costlier, but more reliable government research laboratories, such as the French Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches Aérospatiales, (Onéra) and Germany's Deutschen Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR).
New centres
In parallel, the recently announced establishment of two Boeing research centres in Europe proves that the industry still needs the specific skills of certain schools. Prof Ignasi Casanova, the aerospace programme director at the Barcelona-based Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), which along with Sheffield University in the north of England was selected by Boeing for European R&D centres, explains that Boeing executives toured European universities last year. Through a Ptas1.85 billion ($9.5 million) investment, the UPC is likely to carry out research into two areas of concern for Boeing: emission reduction and advanced navigation systems.
The school's work in environmental monitoring was a key factor in deciding to collaborate. The work it is doing with navigational systems is affected directly by the emissions work, since next generation in-flight entertainment and fly-by-wire technology could be impacted by the quality of air surrounding the craft.
Another high-profile project is the Digital Innovation Centre for Aerospace Engineering set up by Dassault Aviation, IBM and Dassault Systèmes with the Seoul National University in South Korea. Under study are personal flight craft that will be as easy to pilot as cars are to drive. The National University hopes that by being involved in futuristic projects, its prestige as a centre of excellence will be retained, while for Dassault the allure of Korean students who are among the first in the world to straddle information technology and engineering, is obvious.
But not all collaboration is in the engineering field. In the UK, researchers from Cambridge University's Institute for Manufacturing, along with colleagues from the University of Exeter's Business and Economics School, have completed a three-year study into the business drivers of UK aerospace contractors. After interviewing 96 global companies, the Manufacturing Infrastructure Development for the Aerospace Sector (Midas) project found that "strategic decision-making was very poor in the aerospace sector".
"Most firms do not realise that multinational aerospace contractors have huge obligations in other countries that they can offset by manufacturing some parts of a project overseas. Those companies that are willing and able to share those offset obligations by manufacturing overseas are much more likely to be selected for any contract. Even if they are more expensive," says Bruce Ellis, a senior research fellow at Cambridge University, of one of the study's most striking findings. Although funded in part by GKN Westland, in collaboration with the UK's Engineering Physical Science Research Council, the findings will be made available to firms through a series of workshops where weaknesses will be explained. The team then aims to convert its bespoke planning tools into handbooks or software, both available at cost.
Fewer students
What could throw the future of university research into crisis, however, is the ever-dwindling number of students seeking to study engineering. Sheila Widnall, former Secretary of the US Air Force, is now president of the largest US aerospace professional body, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Also a lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Widnall recently found that from over 500 of her colleagues, including engineers, managers, production workers and technical specialists, only 17% would "highly recommend that their children work in this industry".
The problem is worldwide and is highlighted most clearly by the Technical University of Warsaw's aeronautical course director Goraj: his facility has seen dramatic fall in admissions in recent years: down from 200 candidates a year five years ago to only 60 this year. Goraj explains that the options for graduates are so much better in other fields: "An aerospace engineer can expect to earn 1,500 Zloty ($380) a month after graduation, compared to 3,000 Zloty if they work in the financial sector, where wages can rise to as much as 6,000 Zloty within two years. An engineer will still be stuck on 2,000 Zloty. It's not hard to see why many bright graduates desert the industry."
The situation is similar elsewhere in the world, with IT and finance cherry picking each year's best prospects. It is an image problem, according to AIA's Bruce Mahone: "There is no Space Shuttle. There is no Concorde. There are no new projects to excite people."
Recognition
Once graduated, however, European students face the challenge of convincing potential employers in other countries to recognise their qualifications, since commonality between individual nations is limited. "Because the industry is now consolidating and becoming pan-European, the universities need to be pan-European, too," says the TUM aeronautic school's Schmitt. Such thinking has led 20 universities to issue a new 'Pegasus' award as a benchmark of quality across Europe.
Founded by four French elite technical universities, the scheme initially brings together 20 of the continent's premier institutions, including five German partners, four UK institutions including Cranfield University's College of Aeronautics, Italy's Politecnico di Torino and other universities in the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden.
From June, Pegasus institutions are comparing and eventually potentially harmonising their syllabuses. But as with all European initiatives, political hazards dot the path. For example, 99% of Germany's mechanical engineering professors come from a career in industry, which is anathema to French universities, whose staffs cherish their academic roots.
The award will be in addition to national certificates, not least since the Germans would not tolerate the replacement of their highly-valued Diplom-Ingenieur, (almost universally presented as Dipl-Ing) with a Euro-certificate in engineering. Since teaching, curriculum emphasis and timeframes vary widely across Europe, reform will be slow. UK students, who may have reasonably expected to obtain a master's degree in science (MSc) after four years, will instead be encouraged to take a master's degree first in engineering prior to commencing the MSc. Similarly, Italians will have to build an extra two-year laurea specialistica on top of their standard laurea to qualify for a Pegasus award.
The endgame is a European network of schools mapping directly onto a consolidated European industry. "National industries know the relative strengths of the schools on their territory, but are unaware of the strengths of other schools. We aim to make an alliance with all skill sets addressed," says Schmitt.
If this co-operation prospers, the morphing of static wings might be just the beginning.
Source: Flight International
