Aerospace

Why aerospace testing is important?

Aerospace is a unique environment as it is self-contained and cuts across national boundaries throughout the world. For this reason the aerospace environment needs to be agreed and sanctioned in agreement between all countries since an aircraft by it nature can be operated anywhere. This is done through the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAA) which incorporates RTCA for North America and European Organisation for Civil Aviation Equipment (EUROCAE).

The aerospace industry is multinational and indeed there are aircraft components made in many of the trading nations of the world. The US and European industry associations has done most of the international work in standardisation since the two largest commercial aircraft companies, Boeing (US) and Airbus (EU) are based in these geographic areas respectively.

Defence aircraft is not covered by the same requirements as commercial aircraft however since the environments are very similar there is a lot of similarity in requirements. National defence standards and regulations should be consulted for requirements in this area. Since safety is of paramount importance to the aircraft industry, the scope, levels and duration of many of the test requirements are far higher than would be expected for ground based equipment.

The major challenge of the aircraft industry is making lighter products that give higher performance than the existing technology thereby reducing the environmental impact on the planet. This goal is a massive undertaking since many of the composite materials that are now being introduced do not offer the same level of protection that aluminium products offer.

In addition to the use of composite materials in aircraft, there is an increasing need to reduce the amount of wire within the airframe (less, wire, less weight and hence less fuel). This is achieved with multiplexed signals however as more product is designed to be 'fly by wire' this also creates many additional issues that have to be taken into account during the qualification phase.

TRaC offer testing to the following standards applicable for aerospace industry:

Finite Element Analysis for the aerospace industry

TRaC are supporting a number of the Worlds leading Aerospace companies.  Projects include both routine analyses when additional in-house capacity is unavailable, and specialist analysis requirements which are not core business activities.  Examples of these more complex analyses include Bird Strike, Impact Analysis, Multi body dynamics, composite structures, optimisation, crash analysis, R&D specialist projects, analysis of in-service systems.  TRaC are security cleared support Aerospace Companies working on defence projects.  TRaC can also supply specialists on a contract basis.