DESIGN

Evolutions of airworthiness standards for new aircraft structure designs using materials, processes, and advanced manufacturing methods

Action

This invitation to tender is based on Part 8. ‘‘Climate, Energy and Mobility’’ of the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2023-2024, which was published by the European Commission on 6 December 2022.

Through this Work Programme, the European Commission has entrusted the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) with the management of seven research actions with a total budget of EUR 8.5 million. This invitation to tender addresses the following action: ‘‘Evolutions of airworthiness standards for new aircraft structure designs using materials, processes, and advanced manufacturing methods’’.

Expected outcome

The primary goal of this project is to promote the environmentally beneficial use of bonded and sandwich structures in safety-critical aviation applications, emphasising high strength and stiffness-to-weight ratios, while ensuring that catastrophic failures are prevented. This is aligned with aircraft certification specifications (CSs) and EASA regulations, as well as with related acceptable means of compliance (AMC) and guidance material (GM).

Key objectives include:

  • Addressing safety concerns targeted at avoiding failures due to:
    • fatigue;
    • manufacturing defects;
    • environmental degradation;
    • accidental damage.
  • Response to industry incidents initiated to address issues observed in bonded- and sandwich-structure-related incidents, in alignment with industry and regulatory discussions, including:
  • Incorporating recent developments building on industry advancements, such as:
    • enhanced understanding of ground-air-ground (GAG) cycles and their impact on skin-core disbonding;
    • ASTM standard development for Mode-1 dominated skin-core failure testing;
    • design solutions for large passenger aircraft sandwich structures as per CMH-17.
  • Expanding research scope investigating:
    • practical detection methods for failure modes (e.g. weak bonds, shear core failure) that may degrade in service;
    • strategies for continued airworthiness and detection applicable to composite structures, supporting consistency across the industry.

This research project will advance current research by addressing gaps and leveraging recent developments to enhance structural safety, including possible applications beyond large passenger aircraft.

Required output

The expected outcome is industry-supported content relating to the identified Tasks 1, 2, 3, and 4, allowing the development of further regulatory and industry guidelines (as is increasingly necessary with regard to developing ‘performance-based regulation’ (PBR) philosophies) for the safe design, manufacture, and in-service use of bonded and sandwich structures in increasingly critical applications.

  • Task 1 — Provision of a “Current industry status report” addressing sandwich structure technology application and experience;
  • Task 2 — Development of substantiated design solutions;
  • Task 3 — Improvement of damage detection for typically difficult-to-detect damage;
  • Task 4 — Development of hybrid-structure continued-airworthiness strategies;
  • Task 5 — Conclusions, recommendations, implementation roadmap, and cost-benefit analysis; and
  • Task CDS — Communication, dissemination, and stakeholder management.

Regulatory and guidance documents likely to benefit from this work include the following:

Call for tender

Check the Call for Tender for this Research Project

Contract duration: 36 months