NICETRIP Overview

It is proposed to reach the project's general objectives by achieving more specific objectives in relation to the topics addressed by the project:

  • Design of the main tilt-rotor elements and their integration environment: fuselage, wing, tail surfaces, nacelle and engine integration, drive system, rotor system, flight control system, hydraulic system, electrical system and fuel system. General CAD integration of subsystems.
  • Manufacture and integration of critical tilt-rotor parts: rotor hub, blades, drive system, drive system housing.
  • Design and development of a rig for full-scale Prop Rotor Gear Box (PRGB) and housing testing and for whirl tower tests of the integration of rotor hub, blades and PRGB.
  • Full-scale testing: functional, kinematics and performance of the critical parts (gear box, input module, blades, rotor hub) under representative hover loads.
  • Design, development and integration of a large-scale (1/5) full-span powered model for assessing, through wind tunnel tests, aerodynamic interference in helicopter, conversion and fixed-wing modes.
  • Design, development of a full-span modular model (scale 1/8) for evaluating the aerodynamic coefficients of the aircraft through wind tunnel tests
  • Design, development of a small scale partial model of nacelle, for optimising the interference between nacelle and engine through wind tunnel tests
  • Wind tunnel testing in appropriate facilities: at ULg for nacelle/engine, at POLIMI with the full-span modular model, at DNW with the large-scale full-span powered model and at ONERA/ Modane with the same model for high speed testing up to Mach 0.6.
  • Provision of appropriate full-scale and wind tunnel data for the assessment of the European civil tilt-rotor flight demonstrator and weight / cost / reliability of a production aircraft.

These technologically oriented objectives are complemented with scientific and operation related objectives:

  • Consolidation and validation of computation codes: flight mechanics, CFD, aeroelastic, aeroacoustic and performance.
  • Consolidation of the aircraft characteristics and architecture requirements: aircraft performance, general design, loads, handling qualities, aerodynamics and dynamics.
  • Investigation of the tilt-rotor integration in air traffic management / control (ATM/ATC): definition of new ATM operational concepts and related requirements, design and validation of operational ATC procedures, specification of ATC ground system and evaluation of the proposed concepts in simulation.

Finally, other project objectives are concerned with future perspectives:

  • Assessment of the sustainability of the tilt-rotor.
  • Development of recommendations, strategies and plans for future work on the way to a flying prototype and on the capitalisation of the acquired knowledge in areas other than tilt-rotor (aerospace and other industries).

Achieving these objectives will be the project driving goal. The NICETRIP work plan was designed accordingly in order to address separately the main objectives and to reduce the risks of not achieving them. Progress towards objective achievement will be monitored during the project and objective achievement will be assessed with suitable quantified performance targets that will be defined at the start of each related work package or task.