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2009 Issues Archive
9 September 2009
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Grounded
Aerospace research facilities at universities are facing cutbacks, which could damage the industry.
Ben Hargreaves
reports
One of the attractions for a student coming to study aeronautical engineering at London’s City University is the chance to take theory and turn it into practice. So, tucked away in the bowels of the college’s main building is a range of high-tech kit, including wind tunnels and flight simulators, which bring to life the theoretical work in the classroom.
Dr Simon Prince, lecturer in aeronautics at City, is justifiably proud of the facilities his students enjoy. But he, along with academics in other parts of the country, is gravely concerned that engineering departments are being forced to scale down their aeronautical test equipment to cut costs.
The reason is simple, they say: complex equipment takes up space, and university administrators bill engineering departments by the square metre when calculating so-called “floor taxes”. This, the engineers believe, disadvantages them compared with less space-intensive pursuits, such as studying the arts or humanities.
Dr Thurai Rahulan, chairman of the Association of Aerospace Universities, and a senior lecturer at the University of Salford, says: “Admin regard lab space as being unprofitable and put intense pressure on their engineering departments to save money. It is false economy.”
Both Rahulan and Prince highlight the closure of Manchester University’s Goldstein Laboratory at Barton Aerodrome in 2007 as an example of a university being forced to scale down its aerospace facilities under pressure to save money.
A spokesman for Manchester University said the lab had been closed down and its wind tunnels relocated to the university’s main campus to “increase the efficiency of teaching and research”. He added: “Aerospace research at the university is going from strength to strength. The University of Manchester Aerospace Research Institute, which was launched in October 2007, is aiming to become the leading aerospace research facility in the world.”
Rahulan says: “Fortunately dedicated staff [at Manchester] managed to salvage the most valued wind tunnels.” He believes that computing, no matter how advanced, is no substitute for physical test and validation in aeronautical engineering. “There is no doubt that computational simulation has led us to a better theoretical model. But there are still a lot of findings that, when you carry out physical tests, do not match. There are still phenomena that have not been adequately understood or mathematically modelled.”
Closing down lab space, Rahulan says, “results in students becoming more detached from physical reality and dangerously dependent on computational outputs”.
Prince, with the help of several others, has been conducting an audit of aeronautical and mechanical engineering test facilities around the country. The aim is to try to ensure that no more facilities are lost. “We want to maintain capability in the UK – we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” he says.
Closure of labs, the academics believe, sends out the wrong signals about the UK aerospace sector to big international players such as Airbus – at a time when the UK has no representation on key European bodies that will influence the industry’s future. One such body is European Research Establishments in Aerospace, which was founded by the French aerospace research agency in 1994 and sees the French, Germans, Italians and Dutch working together. Before its part-privatisation, the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency – now Qinetiq – would have represented the UK industry as a whole at a national level.
Rahulan says: “It is surprising that despite the UK winding down our national aerospace research centres our major EU partners still fund theirs to project the country’s expertise at globally-coordinated aerospace programmes.”
He believes that the lack of a national body to represent the industry abroad could damage British participation in future international aircraft build programmes. “At the moment our partnerships are riding on previous experience, links and reputation,” he says. “If we are not careful, that reputation could be eroded. We might get edged out. We need to project our prowess by having a body that represents UK aerospace.”
Dr Ruth Mallors of the Aerospace and Defence Knowledge Transfer Network is hoping to set up just such a body this year. She is working on a proposal for a national aerospace research centre with the aim of ensuring that Britain secures, “as a minimum,” 17% of the global market of future programmes such as short-range aircraft.
She says: “This centre would be positioned to see the whole, rather than the fragments. It would be able to see where critical areas were being eroded so that action could be taken. It would be able to promote more effectively the whole of UK investment, and therefore the whole of the UK ‘product’ – in Britain, but also across Europe and globally.”
It is thought that the government could make a decision on funding for the new research centre next month. Academics in the sector will be fervently hoping that it takes off.
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© PE Publishing, 9 September 2009
