ISAE-SUPAERO is a world-leading aerospace engineering school and a research center of excellence focused on aeronautics and space topics: aircraft eco-design, innovative aero-propulsive concepts, micro air vehicles, micro and nanosatellites. For over one hundred years, ISAE-SUPAERO has been educating students to have the most advanced scientific and engineering skills, helping the aeronautics and space industry to anticipate and adapt to the latest scientific, economic, and social changes. Its research is being carried out in partnership with laboratories and manufacturers, ranging from SMEs to multinational companies among which the key world aeronautics stakeholders.
The ISAE-SUPAERO research center involves ~200 permanent staff, including researchers (100), engineers, and technicians. It also relies on the support of Ph.D. students who actively participate in the conducted researches. It is divided into 5 research Departments as follows: Aerospace Vehicles Design and Control Department (French acronym DCAS), Aerodynamics, Energetics, and Propulsion (DAEP); Mechanics of Structure and Materials (DMSM); Electronics, Optronics, and Signal (DEOS); Complex Systems Engineering (DISC). The research activity at ISAE-SUPAERO consists of several lines of approach. Cross-disciplinary is promoted and these lines may belong to a sole Department or may be shared among them. Most of the research activity on aircraft design is essentially multi-disciplinary and concerned with the transition to low-emission aviation through the exploration of innovative aircraft concepts and systems.
The ISAE-SUPAERO ambition of excellence is reflected in the variety of research facilities. Not listing them all, one can cite an engineering platform for embedded systems, a micro air vehicle dedicated wind tunnel, one of the university-oriented largest aeroacoustics wind tunnels in the world, and a test bench turbojet. Additionally, a fleet of about 10 aircraft, among which a flight test dedicated airplane, as well as flight simulators dedicated to studying neural, behavioral, and cognitive sciences.
Role in HERA
The ISAE-SUPAERO team will be involved in T5.1, 5.2, 5.4 & T7.2. The main contributions, in Overall Aircraft Design and disciplinary efforts for Strut & Braced Wing configurations optimization, are highly linked to the development of (a) the OAD open-source platform FAST-OAD jointly developed with ONERA for the last 5 years, and sister of the ONERA Mystic OAD platform, and (b) the appropriate multidisciplinary models specifically dedicated to high aspect ratio-strutted wings, as initiated in CS2-U-HARWARD. Generic knowledge on modelling of disruptive regional aircraft designs here, based on high aspect ratio wing design will be transferred into an educational version of the open-source FAST-OAD. Therefore, it is expected that the qualitative core of some of the HERA research could be swiftly transferred to students., thus allowing a deeper and holistic evaluation of technological breakthroughs in regional air transport.