Helicopters are used in applications providing a valuable contribution to society and economic growth. Today, the service of helicopters includes, search and rescue, coastguard, firefighting, disaster relief, territorial control, monitoring and inspection, heavy-lift support to construction and other sectors, aerial filming and media support. In the future, helicopters and other vertical flight vehicles are expected to see widespread use. However, several issues are to be addressed to increase the use of rotorcraft. In particular, aspects related to complexity of the operations and safety are of primary importance, due to the fact that in the last 20 years helicopter accident rates remained unacceptably high, when compared to fixed-wing aircraft. The complexity of the phenomena involved in rotorcraft flight calls for the training of engineers with a genuine multidisciplinary background.
The goal of NITROS is to train a new generation of aerospace engineers capable of developing innovative approaches in a unique cross-disciplinary research and training program encompassing Control Engineering, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Modelling and Simulation, Structural Dynamics and Human perception cognition and action. NITROS objectives include:
1) Develop a detailed framework for rotorcraft modelling integrating rigid-body and aeroservoelastic modelling features capable of dealing with structural or propulsion/mechanical system failures in rotorcraft.
2) Understand how humans can safely and efficiently be interfaced with rotorcraft technology.
3) Enhance the understanding of the complex aerodynamic environment in which the rotorcraft are working, often in hostile conditions of wake encounter threats, interactions with obstacles, icing and brownout.
NITROS is expected to inject a fresh new safety-centred approach in the rotorcraft engineering community, aligned with the European Union endeavour to reduce the rate of aviation accidents. All these goals can be reached by exposing the young researches to a dynamic network composed by some of the most renewed European engineering schools and research centres working in the rotorcraft field along with industrial partners including manufacturers, operators and certification entities.
