Abstract

PLEASE NOTE that this event will be held at Mathworks on the Science Park, CB4 0JL , to ease access for those working on the North side of Cambridge. There is plenty of space for bicycle and car parking. Event starts at 1830 hours with refreshments from 1800 hours.

Today, steady flight conditions for modern airliners at cruising speed can be simulated successfully using computational methods and ground testing. However, the state of the art for some transient conditions is far behind. In particular, current assessment methods for aircraft gust response at high speed are not adequate for innovative aircraft configurations. This leads to overly conservative designs, implying unnecessary weight and, hence, excessive fuel burn.

In this talk, Angel Gomariz-Sancha, former Team Leader and Principal Aerodynamics Engineer at the Aircraft Research Association (ARA), will discuss the main engineering challenges of developing ARA ’s gust simulator, the world’s first industrialised transonic gust rig, able to provide experimental data for the evaluation of aircraft designs encountering this dynamic phenomenon.

Angel graduated with a Masters degree in Aerospace Engineering from BarcelonaTech (2010), and an MSc in Computational Fluid Dynamics in the College of Aeronautics in Cranfield University (2012).