project aims

 
 

AFLoNext aims to prove the engineering feasibility of the HLFC technology for drag reduction on fin in flight test and on wing by means of large scale testing.

The project shows also engineering feasibility for vibrations mitigation technologies for reduced aircraft weight and noise mitigation technologies.

One fundamental goal of AFLoNext is to further mature all above mentioned technologies and to show their potentials for advanced eco-efficient aircraft design:

  • The technologies which have currently the lowest maturity status (TS2, TS4) amongst the others will be qualified under representative conditions in small to medium lab-type demonstrators.
  • The technologies showing today a medium maturity (TS1 for wing, TS3) will be further matured and tested by means of large-scale testing, either in wind tunnels or ground-based demonstrators.
  • The most mature technologies (TS1 for fin, TS5, TS6) will be flight tested and qualified towards engineering readiness. The latter are going to be embedded in the real aircraft structure facing operational conditions during the flight test phase according to the standard flight envelope of the aircraft.



AFLoNext determines for those technologies with the highest maturity level the net benefit on aircraft level by means of a multidisciplinary assessment, including cash or direct operating costs analysis and also the identification of bottlenecks to innovation