Author name: Kirsten Propitius

Maintenance and Repair

20 July 2023

Extending aircraft service life is more relevant than ever

ICAF Conference: fatigue and the integrity of structural materials. To make flying as efficient and sustainable as possible, the aviation sector is always on the lookout for ways of making aircraft as light as possible. Fatigue – the point at which a material gives way under a low but varying load – plays an important role in this. The service life of an aircraft is largely determined by the risk of failure due to fatigue. Now that advanced lightweight materials and structures are gaining ground, the topic has become more urgent than ever.

Sustainability and Environment

03 July 2023

Scalable electric solution for all aircraft sizes

EASIER, a project funded by the European Commission, has come to an end. The consortium of parties from five different European countries has been able to develop enabling technologies for scalable solutions that deal with increased electric power levels of (hybrid) electric aircraft.

Construction and Manufacturing

11 April 2023

Innovative solutions from a new technology for sustainable aviation

Royal NLR is aiming to improve two things at the same time: saving weight for aviation structures and speeding up their production processes. NLR is therefore exploring a relatively new technology called large-scale additive manufacturing of fibre-reinforced thermoplastic materials.

Sustainability and Environment

14 February 2023

High-voltage distribution technologies for hybrid-electric aircraft

Flying electric is already possible for small aircraft. However, electric power levels need to increase drastically to be able to have large sized airplanes flying (hybrid) electric for regional use. Coordinated by Collins Aerospace the Clean Aviation HECATE project aims to demonstrate the possibilities by 2025.

Sustainability and Environment

09 February 2023

Blog: The world is getting less circular. But what about aviation?

According to the Circularity Gap report, the world has become less circular than a year ago. This alarming fact comes as a surprise when compared to the rising interest in and popularity of the circular economy concept, not to mention the volume of research being done on this topic – also within the aviation sector. During the Circular Economy Week (6-11 February), have a look at the steps NLR has made in a year towards the ambition of becoming the Circular Economy ambassador for the Dutch aviation sector.

Construction and Manufacturing

07 February 2023

One of the world’s largest thermoplastic aerostructures successfully completed

Advanced thermoplastic composite technology and smart robotics will significantly reduce weight and manufacturing cost of future aircraft. Now the Clean Sky 2 Thermoplastic Fuselage Demonstrator (MFFD) lower half has been delivered. At 8m by 4m it’s one of the largest known thermoplastic assemblies in the world. It allowed the project to investigate thermal and positioning effects during the manufacturing of these kinds of complex thermoplastic parts.

Construction and Manufacturing

23 January 2023

Need for energy efficient structures calls for more durable composite structures

Advanced composites are gaining ground in many areas, especially aerospace, automotive and renewable energies, as they are lightweight and help to save energy. What is still missing are accurate and fast pre-production methods to optimise the durability of such large-scale composite structures. The aim of the newly launched EU-funded project D-STANDART is therefore to develop efficient methods to model the durability of large-scale composite structures of any design under realistic conditions.

Integration of MALE RPAS into European Airspace

Air Traffic Management

09 January 2023

R&D case: Integration of MALE RPAS into European Airspace

In addition to supporting defense operations, Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) have numerous civilian applications ranging from infrastructure inspection to search and rescue. However, the current regulatory environment in Europe inhibit such applications as they only permit MALE RPAS operations in segregated airspace. Furthermore, each MALE RPAS flight requires numerous permissions from national aviation authorities, and this process can be very time consuming.

Defence and Security

03 January 2023

Norwegian-Dutch nanosatellites successfully launched

Two Norwegian-Dutch nanosatellites were successfully launched today. “Birkeland” and “Huygens” were placed in orbit around the earth by the company SpaceX. MilSpace2 is a cooperation project between the Netherlands Ministry of Defence, the Norwegian Ministry of Defence, the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI), the Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR) and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO).