With technologies rapidly developing, and an ever-increasing sense of urgency in the drive to improve sustainability, the next few years are set to provide plenty of challenges and changes across the aerospace, transport and manufacturing industries. Faculty share the challenges, trends and opportunities we might see over the coming year.
Autonomous vehicles: upskilling the workforce is essential if we are to design tomorrow’s road vehicles, today
The transport sector is changing rapidly, and connected autonomous vehicles are quickly becoming a reality. Tomorrow’s road vehicles are being designed today. There is a need to increase the numbers of engineers with skills in computing, robotics and networked systems, but it is also vital that these engineers have an understanding of how these operate within the context of the modern automotive sector.
For organisations, upskilling the existing workforce, or recruiting from a pool of specialists will be key. Cranfield’s Advanced Vehicle Engineering Centre (AVEC) has launched a new MSc in Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Engineer, designed to provide graduates with the necessary unique skills for the autonomous technologies that will redefine the future of transport.
Dr Daniel Auger, Senior Lecturer in Control and Vehicle Systems.
Autonomous driving systems could boost productivity and reduce traffic – but they need to be both safe and comfortable, and legislation needs to keep up.
We are working on the safety of autonomous road vehicles. The autonomous driving algorithm needs to be at least as good as our best human driver – i.e. able to cope with complex situations. Our work looks to create autonomous driving systems that are not only safe, but that are also comfortable for passengers. There is no point in having an autonomous car that makes people experience motion sickness. The point of autonomous vehicles is that we want to increase productivity – passengers should not feel the vehicle’s movements from inside.
We are also working on algorithms for self-organising traffic. Imagine if autonomous cars could communicate with each other and orchestrate their movements? There wouldn’t be any need for traffic lights or stop signs. In theory, for every journey the vehicle would only need to accelerate once at the beginning of a journey and decelerate once at the end – without ever having to stop at road junctions or for traffic jams.
The challenge for organisations is keeping up with the technology, which is being developed at a very fast pace. Legislation needs to be updated with the rate of change – current legislation is very obsolete now and it’s impeding the testing and the deployment of autonomous cars because by law, there must be a driver inside.”
Dr Stefano Longo, Senior Lecturer in Vehicle Control and Optimisation
Batteries and energy storage systems for vehicles are becoming increasingly complex – early prototypes and testing are essential to avoid costly surprises
Batteries and similar energy storage systems are increasingly vital across the whole industrial sector. To understand how these will operate at scale, it is important to prototype these early in the development cycle to avoid costly surprises later on, as real-world phenomena such as ageing, thermal behaviour and so on are difficult to predict from data sheets and traditional modelling alone. The situation is becoming more complex as hybrid energy systems – comprising two or more different forms of energy storage – are explored.
The Advanced Vehicle Engineering Centre (AVEC) can help to facilitate this important early prototyping process. It has a test suite which is equipped to perform electrical and thermal experiments on prototype cells, modules and battery packs at an early stage in the development cycle. Using model-based techniques, realistic duty cycles can be applied in a controlled thermal environment. Meanwhile, advanced control, estimation and diagnostic techniques can help to provide a greater understanding of the systems, maximise battery utilisation and prolong equipment life span. Work is also carried out in all aspects of battery systems, from modelling/control for battery management systems and thermal management, through to structural design and crash testing. The support and expertise available within AVEC when it comes to early prototyping has been applied successfully in the mainstream automotive sector and the motorsport domain – and the centre is open to engagement with other sectors.
Dr Daniel Auger, Senior Lecturer in Control and Vehicle Systems.
Air traffic management needs to address the balance between capacity, complexity and efficiency in order to reduce emissions
Air Traffic Management (ATM) will face challenges of their own making. The industry will need to address the balance between capacity and complexity in the airspace and more efficient routes and air traffic procedures to help reduce emissions.
The EUROCONTROL Performance Review Report (PRR) 2018 states that the European ATM system needs to become more efficient to keep up with demand and reduce operational efficiencies while coping with increasing traffic levels. Flight efficiency needs to be balanced alongside capacity, safety and aircraft performance considerations. The benefit of even small flight efficiency improvements translates into substantial distance, fuel and CO2 savings in high density airspaces.
However there is a trade-off between flight efficiency, capacity and handling complexity in the airspace. For example, the PRR Report 2018 showed that during summer 2018 there was more level capping – where there is a restriction in cruise altitude for certain flights to allow other flights to be handled at higher altitude – which leads to a higher amount of vertical flight inefficiency being recorded. This shows the need to take into account all aspects of performance and the balance between flight efficiency and capacity.”
A report published by the Wise Persons Group in April 2019, “on the future of the single European sky” sets out the key challenges that Air Traffic Management faces:
- Growth – by 2040, an increase of 53% compared to 2017 is forecasted. Without measures to increase ATM capacity, 1.5 million flights would not be able to be accommodated.
- Fragmentation - the patchwork of national ATM systems across Europe poses challenges of interoperability and network efficiency.
- Lack of scalable capacity – delays are growing disproportionately compared to traffic, with a lack of flexibility in staffing levels and technology being listed as the main constraints.
- Slow technology uptake – new concepts and technologies are not being implemented at a fast enough pace, partially due to the lack of required standards
- Ineffective regulatory framework – incremental improvements to modernise the ATM sector have not generated the expected performance change or reduction in fragmentation in the European ATM system.
- New entrants in the system (i.e. drones) – integrating the wide diversity of vehicles operating in the airspace safely in the ATM system will be a challenge.
- Environmental considerations – inefficiencies in the ATM system, such as sub-optimal routes and trajectories - will result in higher emissions than necessary
- The short-term capacity crunch - the Wise Persons Group highlights that while the focus of their work has been the longer term future, there is an urgent need to address the immediate capacity issues facing the European ATM network.
Christian Verdonk Gallego, Visiting Fellow in Air Traffic Management, Senior R&D engineer at CRIDA
The drive to improve sustainability will create changes and challenges for the aviation industry - but it will also create opportunities for the next generation of aerospace engineers
In a recent Q&A blog post Professor Iain Gray, Director of Aerospace, outlined the changes, challenges and opportunities that the drive for a more sustainable aviation industry will bring.
This year has seen the sector recognise and appreciate the significance and the role that aviation and aerospace have to play. In terms of changes, I think there are several elements.
One is on the technology itself. There is an increased focus around electrification, battery technologies and hydrogen fuels. This also reinforces the importance of areas like light-weighting, with the drive to reduce the weight of aircraft.
But I also think it means that people need to understand a lot more about the overall system in which aerospace operates… It isn’t just about being focused around a specific platform design or aircraft design. It’s about understanding how an aircraft and aircraft operations fits into and impact the environment. How it links with air traffic control, links with the airport, links with other forms of infrastructure. I think that’s how it’s changing, there’s a much bigger emphasis on the overall integrated system level.
There are many different opportunities. Some of them perhaps as a direct consequence of environmental challenges – smaller companies making electric or hydrogen-powered aircraft are increasingly going to be looking for graduates in a way that for the last twenty or thirty years they haven’t been. There are some fantastic opportunities for new graduates to get involved with smaller companies that are looking at products driven by these environmental challenge opportunities.
People now need to understand where they fit within that broader aviation eco-system. I think there will be more mobility - people that have worked in aircraft design will be needed within airports or needed in air traffic control environments… that gives a much broader range of career opportunities.”
For engineers starting their career in the aerospace sector Professor Gray stated that they should “follow their intuition, do things, be brave, take advantage of some of these exciting opportunities within the sector… Do the things you want to do, the opportunities are there to do that in a way they haven’t been for the last two, three decades.”
Professor Iain Gray, Director of Aerospace
Pushing boundaries in materials – the balance of performance, upscaling, safety and sustainability
Professor Krzysztof Koziol outlines the challenges and opportunities of pushing the boundaries when it comes to materials and 3D printing currently being addressed by the Enhanced Composites and Structures Centre at Cranfield.
The more ‘extreme environment’ industries like space and formula 1 are really looking for new materials, pushing boundaries because of performance and because of safety – which we have taken as a challenge and are trying to resolve.
From a materials perspective, industry is looking for materials that perform. The issue with this is the security of the supply of those materials. Companies need to make sure they are getting the same material over and over again. The other aspect to mention is sustainability. Industry is really actively now looking into materials that not only perform but ones that are also sustainable. It is a constant challenge for industry to find new, sustainable materials.”
On the manufacturing side, things are also changing. A lot of 3D printing approaches are being scaled up to something we have never seen before. I am talking about a large scale 3D printing of an aircraft wing by using a series of robots that will deposit materials and fibres, building up a high performing structure. We need to ensure we can manage this significant upscale.”
Professor Krzysztof Koziol, Professor of Composites Engineering and Head of the Enhanced Composites and Structures Centre.
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