MARCH 2025ELECTRICAL BUSINESS REVIEW EUROPE8IN MY OPINIONBy Thomas Ahn, Vice President Engineering, Deutsche AircraftThomas Ahn is an aerospace engineer with over 35 years of experience in aircraft development programs, covering regional aircraft, commercial jets, business jets, fighters, cruise missiles, and amphibious aircraft. He currently holds the position of VP of chief engineering and chief engineer for the D328ecoTM program at Deutsche Aircraft in Germany. He received his Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering from the University of Applied Sciences in Augsburg, Germany and has worked for several renowned aerospace companies such as Dornier, DeHavilland, Bombardier, Airbus Defense and Space, and Grob Aircraft. Thomas has been instrumental in the development and launches of several successful aircraft models and is now dedicated to building a regional aircraft for a sustainable future based on the heritage of the Dornier 328.Methodologies Applied to Integrate Modern Technologies into the Overall Architecture of a New AircraftThe seamless integration of any new technology at Deutsche Aircraft is governed by the company's technology development roadmap, which combines aspects of our market strategy, the customer satisfaction strategy, the business strategy, and the resulting product portfolio strategy. All new technologies have to prove mainly two things: the value they can generate for customers and business and the readiness for introduction into new product development. When we talk about new technologies, we need to distinguish between aircraft-level technologies, system-level technologies and component-level technologies. As an aircraft OEM, Deutsche Aircraft is mainly concerned with the development of aircraft-level technologies, addressing the overall aerodynamic configuration of an aircraft, the overall systems architecture of an aircraft as a flying system (including the propulsion system) and the overall airframe technology, affecting the structural integrity and represent the biggest weight drivers in aircraft development. To effectively integrate those aircraft-level technologies, we use means such as wind tunnel tests, modern simulation tools and techniques, and system in-the-loop test rigs. We use flying test beds and our flight test vehicles for the aircraft in-the-loop testing.Share Experiences from One of the Uniquely Designed Projects You Were Recently Involved InOur company is working on a flying test bed that can be used to understand future propulsion system architectures. With the test flights, we explore the impact of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) on the greenhouse effect. However, the introduction of such an aircraft is expensive due to the need for dedicated infrastructure. The results of those tests feed directly into the development of the D328ecoTM, which is a highly flexible product that can operate using conventional jet fuel as available worldwide but is designed from the start to be operated using 100 percent SAF. By offering the flexibility to operate with a wide variety of future SAF types, DEVELOPMENTS IN AIRCRAFT ARCHITECTURE DESIGNThomas Ahn
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