Advanced Assembly Solutions for the Airbus RACER Joined-Wing Configuration

Bainbridge, David; Bacharoudis, Konstantinos; Cini, Andrea; Turner, Alison; Popov, Atanas; Ratchev, Svetan

Abstract

The Rapid And Cost Effective Rotorcraft (RACER) is being developed by Airbus Helicopters (AH) to demonstrate a new Vertical TakeOff and Landing configuration to fill the mobility gap between conventional helicopters and aeroplanes. RACER is a compound rotorcraft featuring wings and multiple rotors. The wing arrangement suggested by AH is defined as a staggered bi-plane joined configuration with an upper and a lower straight wing, either side of the fuselage, connected at their outboard extent to form a triangular structure. The ASTRAL consortium, consisting of the University of Nottingham and GE Aviation Systems, are responsible for the design, manufacture, assembly and testing of the wings. Producing an optimised strategy to assemble a joined-wing configuration for a passenger carrying rotorcraft is challenging and novel. The objective of this work concerns all aspects of assembling the joined-wing structure.

Citation

Bainbridge, D., Bacharoudis, K., Cini, A., Turner, A., Popov, A., & Ratchev, S. (2019). Advanced Assembly Solutions for the Airbus RACER Joined-Wing Configuration

• Conference Name: Aerotech Europe Conference
• Start Date: Sep 24, 2019
• End Date: Sep 26, 2019
• Acceptance Date: Jul 1, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Sep 26, 2019
• Publication Date: Sep 26, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jul 23, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 27, 2020
• Publisher: SAE International
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2333213
• Related Public URLs: https://www.sae.org/attend/aerotecheurope
• Additional Information: SAE Paper No.: 2019-01-1884