"AIRFRAMES" : WINGLETS (blended,... spiroid...etc.)

[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] plans to fly its second-generation spiroid winglets on a company [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] in the third quarter. The flight is part of the [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] the company received last year to further investigate the novel devices, in part to analyse the potential for reducing aircraft separation distances.
API founder and president Joe Clark says the new spiroids, now in design, are likely to eliminate wingtip vortices in the near field region, although the effects in the far-field, roughly 4.6-5.6km (2.5-3nm) behind the aircraft, will have to be determined by test. API plans to equip its Dassault Falcon 50 with the devices as part of the research programme, which is being managed by the US Department of Transportation's Research and Innovative Technology Administration (Rita).

Rita will make progressive payments to API based on milestones, the first of which is a report on the company's early 1990s' flight tests of first-generation spiriods in a [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] GII. Results from those tests reportedly showed a 6-10% drag reduction in cruise flight with the devices, although API is not providing quantitative numbers. Rita plans to [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] for the spiroid test programme on 14 June.

Hank Thompson, API vice-president of operations, says the new aerodynamic configuration for the winglets will take advantage of "all that we've learned over the past couple of decades". He says the analytical results are "very promising", but he'd be "reluctant to put performance numbers on it".

Aside from aerodynamic performance, Thompson says there remain "significant" manufacturing challenges in building a structure that will be stiff enough to be aerodynamically correct through all flight regimes, but also economical to manufacture.

Engineers are investigating a variety of materials, from composites to metal, from which the looping wingtips might be constructed. A vendor has not yet been selected to build the devices for flight tests that are expected to begin in the summer or early autumn, says Thompson.

SEATTLE, March 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Aviation Partners, Inc. and Aviation Partners Boeing announced today that as of March 5, 2010 at 19:05 P.S.T. their unique Blended Winglet* Technology will have saved the world's airlines and private jet operators 2 Billion gallons of jet fuel, or 4 Billion plus U.S. dollars. This represents a global reduction in CO2 emissions of almost 21.5 Million tons. Aviation Partners Winglet Technology is now flying on more than 3,700 airplanes and 21 different models.

Joe Clark, Chairman and CEO of Aviation Partners, and John Reimers, CEO of Aviation Partners Boeing, both agreed the fuel savings are significant and this number will climb exponentially to more than 7 Billion gallons within the next five years.

Clark said, "We are very proud of this achievement and excited that we are ahead of the curve in energy conservation." This technology is being delivered to the world's airlines and private jet operators at a rate of over 400 aircraft per year.

What's unique about Aviation Partners Blended Winglet technology is that it is available for existing airplanes as well as new production. Aviation Partners Boeing has retrofitted roughly two thousand in-service airplanes to make them more efficient in today's environment.
We are doing our part in a changing world.
Seattle, Washington based Aviation Partners, Inc. (API) is the world leader in advanced Blended Winglet technology. Aviation Partners Boeing is a joint venture between Aviation Partners, Inc. and The Boeing Company.

Aviation Partners To Test Spiroids

[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir cette image] Aviation Partners Inc. (API) will begin testing “spiroid” loop-shaped wing tip devices on a Dassault Falcon 50 starting in early June 2010, Hank Thompson, the company’s vice president of operations, told Aviation Week today. The development program is funded in part by a federal government grant administered by FAA’s John A. Volpe Transportation Systems Center in Cambridge, Mass. The goal will be to explore wing modifications that have the potential to reduce FAR Part 36 noise signature and carbon emissions. The spiroid devices being developed for the Falcon 50 are a generation newer than the original designs tested by API on a Gulfstream G-II several years ago. Thompson admits being “a bit reluctant” to make predictions for the actual performance improvement that could be obtained with the spiroids, but he said, “We’re optimistic that they may be one of the best wing tip devices API has yet designed.” The spiroids aren’t being specifically designed for Dassault Falcon business jets. API mainly is using the Falcon 50 as a flying test bed because it’s a company-owned airplane. API Senior VP Technology Louis “Bernie” Gratzer, PhD has spent decades refining the firm’s computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes, feeding back in data obtained from flight tests to hone the accuracy of his predictions. API claims that its current-generation winglets have saved the airlines more than 2-billion gallons of fuel since making their debut on Southwest Airlines’ Boeing 737 aircraft in mid 2003. “We’ve never created a design that didn’t do exactly what we said it would do,” Thompson said confidently.

JetBlue Airways CEO David Barger said the airline is eager for more progress on a winglet for the A320 that it can retrofit to its existing fleet. Air New Zealand became the launch customer for the sharklet-equipped A320 on new-build aircraft at last year's Dubai Air Show. "I'm just looking for a winglet or sharklet so we can go nonstop Boston-Oakland 100% of the time," Barger said at last week's Phoenix International Aviation Symposium, adding that the capability “is worth $20 million" to the LCC's bottom line. He said it is working with Aviation Partners and Airbus.

[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] is confident that performance upgrades in the pipeline for its single-aisle ­family will give its largest model, the A321, a sufficient range boost for a genuine shot at the huge ­[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] 757-200 replacement ­market.

The airframer's chief operating officer for customers, John Leahy, believes that the new 'sharklet' winglets, which will provide a 3.7% reduction in fuel burn and around 220km (120nm) more range on the A321 from 2012, means there are "great opportunities to replace the 757-200".

According to Airbus there are 689 passenger 757-200s in service, with several large fleets operating with US carriers including American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines and [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]. The latter is in the early stages of a fleet renewal evaluation for its 96 aircraft, although this may be affected by its proposed merger with Continental Airlines.

The 757, which is slightly larger that the A321, has always had superior payload-range, but the sharklet upgrade gives the Airbus single-aisle "true US transcontinental range capability", says Leahy.

He adds that the sharklet-outfitted A321 will be able to operate between Boston and San Francisco or San Francisco and Maui, Hawaii, with maximum passengers - similar to routes flown by the US 757 operators - but with a 17% per seat fuel burn advantage, based on a 185-seat A321 and 192-seat 757-200.

Equipped with Aviation Partners Boeing winglets, the 757 has a range of 8,300km, which is around 2,600km more than the A321, giving it transatlantic range.

757 operators are beyond the capability of the A321, and says that the primary focus centres on US transcontinental routes.

[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien] chief executive Akbar Al Baker, whose airline is a major [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]-family operator, said recently that Airbus' proposed 'new engine option' re-engining with advanced turbofans would provide an even more significant boost in performance for the A321.

Boeing is not being idle on its current narrowbody family, and will decide this year on re-engining for the 737 to give a potential fuel burn improvement of 10-15%.

Airbus claims that the A321 with sharklets has an 8% fuel-burn advantage over the current version of the largest 737, the 173-seat -900ER. However Boeing plans to deliver a 2% improvement in fuel burn for the 737 next year through the new [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]-7BE engine and an aerodynamic clean-up.

Xil a écrit: Je me téléphone en conférence personnelle pour analyse, parceque c'est intéressant, ça tient très bien la route.

Je suppose que pas mal de collègues ont lu et apprécié.

Et ceci correspond parfaitement à ce que dit, d'une autre façon, l'ingénieur conseil : airframe d'une main, moteurs de l'autre.

Il parait même que chez Bombardier " ça discute, dispute..."

Xil a écrit:P&W Et chez Mistubishi ? Il est question des 100 sièges...mais pas plus.

• compte tenu des craintes de "shortfall" / 'déficit' en matière de "fuel-burn efficiency" du moteur P&W, surtout pendant quelques années après l'EIS, .......même si la puissance- / poussée-moteur semble acquise (s'agirait-il d'un problème de difficulté d'intégration ; moteur large pour la carlingue "trop belle et fine", avec turbulences, plutôt que d'une question de vibrations, dans le milieu "aile, fuselage, pylône et moteur" ?), ...
  
• 
  
• une manière de récupérer les ratios 'promis' en "seat-mile costs", serait d'augmenter le nombre des sièges ;
  
• 
  
• et le nombre de 100 ne serait pas gênant pour "l'ami Boeing" ! [Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir cette image]
  

Xil a écrit:Jouer avec les feeders et les majors en même temps est un sacré pari !

Who came up with the dual-feather blended winglet concept that Boeing revealed earlier today?

Boeing says it owns the intellectual property on the split wingtip design for the 737 Max.

But that claim was only made because three different reporters asked about the tech[Vous devez être inscrit et connecté pour voir ce lien]nology's ownership in a teleconference this morning programme manager Beverly Wyse and chief engineer Michael Teal.

That's probably because the similarity with the already unveiled Aviation Partners winglet is too much to ignore. Aviation Parnters chief executive Joe Clark proudly showed off his new winglet design about six months ago at the NBAA annual convention.

Boeing's released images so far appear to show a few differences. Boeing's lower feather seems to end at a straight edge, while the Aviation Partners design curves slightly. There also seems to be more convex shaping in the upper feather of the Aviation Partners wingtip.

Boeing vient d’annoncer que le 737 MAX serait doté d’un nouveau type d’ailettes marginales. Ces winglets au design futuriste baptisé "Advanced Technology Winglet" permettraient, selon le constructeur américain une diminution supplémentaire de 1,5 % de la consommation en carburant, en plus de la réduction de 10 à 12 % déjà annoncée auparavant pour cette version remotorisée du monocouloir américain.

Les images tout récemment diffusées montre des ailettes marginales possédant deux appendices, l’un orienté vers le haut, l’autre vers le bas, et d’une taille similaire à celles des "blended winglet" (winglets intégrés) qui équipent déjà le 737 NG.

Boeing explique que sur le 737 NG, ces "blended winglet", autorisaient déjà une réduction de 4 % de la consommation en carburant. Celles du 737 MAX permettront une réduction de 5,5 %. D’où une consommation en carburant réduite de 18 % par rapport à l’A320 classique, selon l’avionneur américain.

Boeing a confirmé que ce design était entièrement de sa conception, et qu’il n’impliquait pas la société américaine Aviation Partners qui fournit actuellement les "blended winglet" du 737 NG. Et ce en dépit d’une troublante ressemblance avec un design de winglet présenté par Aviation Partners à l’automne dernier lors de la convention de la NBAA, baptisé "split-tip scimitar winglets" (cf A&C n°2285).

Si Aviation Partners se voit de fait éjecté du programme 737 MAX, Boeing précise néanmoins qu’il continuera de travailler exclusivement avec cette société basée à Seattle dans le cadre du 737 NG.

L’avionneur américaine affirme que ces "Advanced Technology Winglets" sont le fruit d’enseignements obtenus lors de la mise au point des 787 et 747-8, tous deux équipés de dispositifs d’extrémité de voilure baptisés "raked wingtips".

Ces "Advanced Technology Winglets" ont pour le moment été testés dans la soufflerie basse vitesse de Qinetiq en Grande-Bretagne et haute vitesse de Boeing aux Etats-Unis. Leur intégration sur le 737 ne devrait pas fondamentalement bouleverser sa structure et devrait également contribuer à un accroissement de sa distance franchissable.