11/12/2019

It was recently announced that Cranfield University is to be awarded our sixth Queen’s Anniversary Prize for our work supporting the nation’s aero-engineering students at Cranfield’s National Flying Laboratory Centre (NFLC).

The NFLC brings together experienced academics, technical specialists (including pilots and engineers) and instrumented aircraft (a Jetstream 31 and two light aircraft) to allow the University to deliver experiential learning for aerospace engineers across the UK in the ‘Flying Lab’.

The ‘Flying Lab’ has played a significant role in the education of over 30,000 aerospace students, from more than 20 universities, propelling them in their careers both in the UK and international aviation industry. It provides them with an immersive flight test engineer experience and the flight test data is used as a tool to teach students how to validate and question computational models of the aircraft - an important skill in an increasingly virtual world.

But it’s more than just numbers

At the heart of this, is the opportunity students have to see what their figures mean in reality. It helps them ground their understanding and visualise the future, giving them a sense of perspective. So what may start out as complex, dry mathematical formulae in a textbook is transformed through an inspiring and defining experience in the aircraft.

One of the things that students experience on the aircraft that you just cannot experience in a simulator is the physical sensation of flight. Some of the flight regimes students are able to explore in the aircraft are rather different to what people might feel if they fly to a foreign destination. Students talk about the sensation of the G forces and how experiencing them, no matter how uncomfortable, helps them translate the maths into the effects on the human body - even if that may mean occasionally using the sick bag.

The experience of the flights the students undertake lives long in the memories of students - many remember exactly what a Dutch-roll, and other manoeuvres, feel like for many years. But it’s not just Cranfield students who benefit.

Mark Howard, Head of R&T Business Development and Partnerships at Airbus, came to Cranfield and experienced the ‘Flying Lab’ over 30 years ago, and even today he still remembers what that felt like. He describes it as an amazing feeling, an experience that reinforced what real aircraft do and the fundamental physics of the aircraft.

Flight testing is an important part of what Rolls-Royce do, and Ash Owen, Chief Engineer, Civil Demos and R&T at Rolls-Royce got to experience the ‘Flying Lab’ in the 1980s at Cranfield. He says that experience stays with you for your whole career.

Ambitious plans

While the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for our work supporting the nation’s aero-engineering students is a fabulous reflection of the impact that we have made, Cranfield is already looking to the future.

We have ambitious plans to expand the capacity of the NFLC to support more students and to create new innovative research capabilities. With this in mind, in early 2019 we launched a £3 million fundraising campaign to replace the current ‘Flying Lab’ with a larger, more efficient aircraft, a Saab 340B, that will allow us to fly more students and do more research. Thanks to the support of our alumni and friends, along with the various organisations and industry partners who have given generously, we are almost two-thirds of the way towards our initial £3 million target.

We took ownership of the Saab 340B at a ceremony at Saab AB in Linköping on 14 November and work will soon begin on the modifications, such as WiFi, sensors on the flight surfaces and engines, cabin workstations, and experimental equipment racks in the cargo compartment, as part of its transformation into the new, but still unique, ‘Flying Lab’.

Around the same time as the new ‘Flying Lab’ arrives in Cranfield, we will be launching our new Digital Aviation Research and Technology Centre (DARTeC). DARTeC will provide an experimental airport, and all students flying in the ‘Flying Lab’ will be able to be part of the research conducted in that building, which makes it a really exciting time to be involved in aerospace at Cranfield.

When not flying students, the new ‘Flying Lab’ will serve as a platform for transformational research and for testing new equipment, pushing aviation technology forwards. We hope that it will participate at the Farnborough Air Show in 2020 so we can demonstrate the capabilities of the 'Flying Lab' to the world.

However, first we have a date to receive our Queen’s Anniversary medal which will be presented by The Queen at Buckingham Palace on 20 February 2020. The NFLC’s Queen’s Anniversary Prize represents a team effort and recognises all the people involved, from those who prepare the aircraft and work with students to those who run the research and develop partnerships that transform theory into practice.

Congratulations to everyone involved in the NFLC!

You can find out more information on the NFLC campaign and how you can support it here 

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