A day after China barred its airlines from complying with what many consider a tax, the head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) warned that several nations view the EU scheme as an "attack on sovereignty".

"Non-European governments see this extra terrestrial tax as an attack on their sovereignty," International Air Transport Association (IATA) director general Tony Tyler said in a speech to the European Aviation Club.

Airlines have denounced the system as a new tax and warn that it would cost the industry 17.5 billion euros ($23.8 billion) over eight years. The IATA claims to represent 84 percent of global passenger and cargo traffic.

But the head of the European Low Fares Airline Association, who claims to account for 43 percent of flights within the EU, said the United States and other opponents should work harder to develop their own plans to reduce harmful emissions -- which would then trigger exemptions.

"If your challenge is found wanting in the supreme court of Europe, it is time to throw in the towel and comply," John Hanlon told AFP.

Tyler said at least 43 states have declared their opposition to the European Union's decision to bring aviation into an Emissions Trading System (ETS) set up to combat global warming.

And after the EU's executive Commission on Monday warned there would be no going back on laws that entered force on January 1, Tyler suggested commercial disobedience was a valid tactic.

"Some non-European airlines may have to choose whether to obey the law of their land or that of Europe," he told the audience of aviation executives, EU regulators and lawyers.

Tyler called for a global deal to ensure a level playing field. He said this should be agreed through the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), an arm of the United Nations.

He said the current, unilateral action by the EU had created "an intolerable situation," and indicated that a "trade war" was the likeliest outcome after the "bold action" undertaken by China.

To avoid "an impossible choice," he said "a global scheme developed through ICAO would provide a superior solution both for managing aviation's emissions and to resolving the political problems caused by extending the scheme beyond Europe's borders.

"But time is not on our side. Airlines from Europe may face some retaliatory action," he underlined.

The system went ahead despite a plea by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the EU to halt or delay its application, and the European Court of Justice has already rejected the legal basis of a challenge raised in London by north American airlines.

Companies that refuse to comply could be fined and denied the right to land in the 27-state EU in extreme cases.

But Chinese airlines are unlikely to be penalised immediately as carriers have until April 30 next year to calculate their annual emissions and buy polluting rights for 2012.

Some airlines, including US carrier Delta Air Lines, have already decided to add a surcharge to passenger tickets.

The European Commission argues that the cost for airlines is manageable, estimating that the scheme could prompt carriers to add between 4.0 and 24 euros ($32) to the price of a round-trip long-haul flight.

Some 655 million people flew in Europe last year, and EU climate action commissioner Connie Hedegaard said the additional cost per passenger for Indian airlines, for example, "will be around 65 cents."

Hanlon said his members "totally support" the EU measures.

"There is scope in the directive for exemptions where equivalent measures are introduced in other territories -- that's what the Chinese and the Americans should be concentrating on," he said.

"Instead, they're taking the gunboat approach rather than the diplomatic approach to getting a global solution."

Hedegaard's spokesman Isaac Valero Ladron underlined: "If ICAO agree a global deal, we will be so happy to modify our legislation -- but they have been unable to agree a deal for the last 20 years.

"Why should the steel industry come under the ETS and not aviation, or shipping, which is still outside its scope?"

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:14 AEST Mumbai (IANS) Feb 08, 2012 - With calls for the government to liberalise foreign direct investment (FDI) norms to allow foreign airlines to invest up to 49 percent in domestic air carriers, India will see a tremendous need for aerospace engineers in the next decade, experts said.

Speaking on the sidelines of Zephyr-2012, the annual aviation festival of Indian Institute of Technology, Air Marshal (retd) J.S. Gujral said that the demand will also grow in civil aviation.

"With the growing need for setting up better MRO (maintenance, repairs and overhaul) facilities in India, the demand of such engineers will only increase," Gujral told IANS.

According to experts, India will need in excess of 50,000 trained and licensed engineers by 2020 to service the demand of a slew of both Indian and foreign aircraft maintenance facilities.

"Several foreign aircraft maintenance facilities are eyeing opening new units in the country, to service the demand of a growing aviation industry," said Bharat Malkani, chairman and managing director of Max Aerospace and Aviation Ltd.

"We have around 25,000 licensed engineers in India. Every year only 350-400 aeronautical engineers pass out from various IITs and other recognised training institutions," he added.

Stating that young aspiring engineers should look to taking up aerospace engineering as a career, Malkani noted that India will be able to deliver only 4,000 such engineers in the next eight years.

"Salaries over the next three-five years will skyrocket by more than 150-200 percent due to this scarcity, which is good for the students eyeing a career in aeronautical engineering," he said.

The demand will also find its basis as there is an increasing need for new MRO facilities in India.

According to aviation ministry officials, by 2025, India's airlines will operate about 1,800 aircraft, handling an estimated 400 million passengers a year.

An estimate by Ernst and Young says that the Indian MRO industry in the aviation sector will receive investments up to $30 billion by 2020.

"The reason why India's MRO industry will develop is because it is cheaper and faster to repair in India than send the planes abroad for maintenance," Gujral said.

"Again, due to this we will need more aircraft maintenance engineers and considering that there is a huge demand of such engineers, their salaries will also take a huge jump," he added.

Gujral, however, said that there are major challenges to be overcome in positioning India as a cost-efficient MRO hub.

"These include high taxes, regulatory issues, a shortage of space at major airports and high attrition rate of skilled labour due to the growth of MRO activities in Middle East and Far East," he said.

Source: Indo Asian News Service

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:14 AEST London (IANS) Feb 08, 2012 - An Austrian skydiver will try to break the sound barrier during a free fall from a balloon on the edge of space later this year, The Telegraph reported Sunday.

Felix Baumgartner will be the first person to do so. Baumgartner will leap from a balloon, plummeting to the ground 120,000 feet below.

After 35 seconds he will break the sound barrier, and finally, at 5,000 feet he will deploy a parachute and - hopefully - land safely on the ground.

During his 10-minute journey to earth the Austrian will travel at over 690 miles per hour inside a special suit, which must protect him from temperatures as low as -70 degrees Celsius, the newspaper said.

He will rely on its oxygen tanks as the air is too thin to breathe - and hope that the sheer force of the fall does not make him black out.

The record breaking jump was expected to take place in August above New Mexico.

Baumgartner, who in 2003 became the first person to "skydive" across the English Channel, will undertake two test jumps at 60,000 feet and 90,000 feet over the coming months to make sure the specialised equipment he is using will help him survive.

Writing on his blog about being given the chance to make the jump, Baumgartner said: "I am struggling to find the right words to express my happiness, how relieved and motivated I am."

Baumgartner said he hoped his stunt would help provide valuable information about how humans will cope in the future with space tourism and open up new types of extreme sports such as space diving, the Telegraph added.

The skydive, which is being sponsored by energy drink manufacturer Red Bull, will attempt to break four world records - the highest altitude freefall, the highest manned balloon flight, the longest distance travelled in freefall and the speed record for the fastest freefall.

Source: Indo Asian News Service

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:14 AEST London (AFP) Feb 5, 2012 - Thousands of passengers were stranded on Sunday after heavy snow and forecasts of freezing fog forced London Heathrow Airport to cancel 50 percent of its scheduled flights.

"Airlines expect to operate about 50 percent of the 1,300 flights originally scheduled for today," the west London airport said in a statement on its website.

Six centimetres (2.4 inches) of snow blanketed Heathrow overnight, but the announcement came as the flakes stopped falling over Britain and as forecasters predicted a partial thaw.

"Our runways, taxiways and stands have been cleared of snow," said Heathrow. "The airport is getting back to normal. However there will still be disruption for passengers as indicated yesterday."

Officials had not reduced the flight schedule for Monday but warned there could be further cancellations as a result of the earlier disruption.

The airport, which is the world's busiest air hub in terms of international passenger traffic, said it expected no further snowfall on Sunday but said freezing fog was forecast from 6:00pm (1800 GMT).

The airport's decision to cancel thirty percent of Sunday's flights on Saturday, before any snow had fallen, was met with derision in the British press.

"27C in Munich, but still every plane flies," said the Mail on Sunday. "Meanwhile, despite 32 million pounds on new snowploughs, Heathrow cancels flights BEFORE a flake of snow falls.

"Whatever the explanation, Heathrow's defeatist performance is not worthy of a world-class transport hub," the tabloid concluded.

Heathrow, which handles more than 180,000 travellers a day, defended the decision by saying it gave passengers better information about whether they would be able to fly or not.

"By cancelling flights in advance airlines have been able to rebook some people onto flights that are departing," it said, adding that its "snow plan" had worked "far better" than in previous years.

Heathrow came under heavy criticism in December 2010 after snow led to the virtual shutdown of the airport for several days.

Other British airports affected by the freeze include Stansted, Manchester, Birmingham and Luton, which ground to a halt for part of Saturday night after snow blocked the runways. Operations resumed on Sunday with some delays.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:14 AEST Beijing (AFP) Feb 6, 2012 - China said Monday it has banned its airlines from complying with an EU scheme to impose charges on carbon emissions opposed by more than two dozen countries including India, Russia and the United States.

Beijing has said repeatedly that it opposes the new European Union plan, which was imposed with effect from January 1, and which Chinese state media have warned would lead to a "trade war" in the sector.

A statement on the website of China's State Council, or cabinet, also said airlines were barred from using the EU's emissions trading scheme (ETS) to increase fares or other passenger charges.

"The Civil Aviation Administration of China recently issued a directive to Chinese airlines that without the approval of relevant government departments, all transport airlines in China are prohibited from participating in the EU ETS," said the statement.

The EU's ambassador to China said he hoped the stand-off, which comes a week before Chinese and EU leaders meet in Beijing for a summit, could be resolved through negotiations.

"There are a number of avenues to be pursued -- bilateral, multilateral and possibly legal," Markus Ederer told journalists in Beijing.

"The EU would like to have an international solution to this... That's the way forward, hopefully through negotiations, (to) find an agreement between all stakeholders."

China has said it fears its aviation sector will have to pay an additional 800 million yuan ($125 million) a year on flights originating or landing in Europe, and that the cost could be almost four times higher by 2020.

The European Commission argues that the cost for airlines is manageable, estimating that the scheme could prompt carriers to add between 4.0 and 24 euros ($32) to the price of a two-way long-haul flight.

"We are not backing down and this legislation will apply to companies operating in Europe," said Isaac Valero-Ladron, spokesman for EU climate action commissioner Connie Hedegaard.

"It will be much more costly for any airline not to comply with the legislation than doing so."

Some airlines have announced new ticket fees since the EU's rules came into force.

US carrier Delta Air Lines, one of the world's biggest airlines, added a $6 surcharge for two-way flights between the United States and Europe.

Germany's Lufthansa indicated it would raise its fuel surcharge, a move taken by Belgian carrier Brussels Airlines, which increased it by 10 euros to 135 euros for international flights and by three euros to 39 euros for EU routes.

Airlines denounce the system as a new tax and warn that it would cost the industry 17.5 billion euros ($23.8 billion) over eight years.

The system went ahead despite a plea by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the EU to halt or delay its application.

The Airlines for America association grudgingly indicated that its members would abide by the EU law, but "under protest" while pursuing legal options.

The China Air Transport Association, which represents the country's airlines, said last month the government was considering "countermeasures" against the EU scheme, without giving any details.

It has said the charge would affect all of China's major airlines, including Air China, China Eastern and China Southern. The last two refused to comment when contacted by AFP, and Air China was not immediately available.

Ederer said the EU was ready to exempt any airline from the carbon charges if their country decided to slap "equivalent" levies on their carriers in a bid to offset their own emissions.

But Chinese airlines are unlikely to be penalised immediately as carriers have until April 30 next year to calculate their annual emissions and buy polluting rights for 2012.

Luo Yanyan, an analyst at China Merchants Securities based in the southern city of Shenzhen, said the scheme would have little impact on Chinese carriers in the coming, few years.

"It remains uncertain whether the EU can actually put this into force, given worldwide opposition," she told AFP.

"But in the long term, Chinese airlines may come under pressure as they won't give up their business in the European market if the EU really carries out the plan to levy the tax."

The European Union launched the ETS in 2005 in a bid to reduce carbon emissions of power stations and industrial plants.

It decided to include airlines, responsible for three percent of global emissions, in the system in the absence of a global agreement to cap aviation emissions.

Airlines that refuse to comply could be fined and denied the right to land in the 27-nation EU in extreme cases, the bloc has said.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:14 AEST Berlin, Germany (SPX) Feb 06, 2012 - Modern helicopters could be significantly faster and more manoeuvrable - if aerodynamics did not impose limitations on them. Researchers at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) in Gottingen have now discovered and flight-tested a way to increase manoeuvrability using an idea they got from observing humpback whales.

Helicopters owe their special ability to vertically take off and land to their main rotor, but this also contributes to aerodynamic disadvantages.

The airflow over a backward-moving main rotor blade separating from the aerofoil during fast forward flight or manoeuvring, referred to as a 'dynamic stall', creates turbulence, loss of lift and exerts large forces on the rotor. Drag increases and the rotor head control rods are subjected to large dynamic loads.

"This limits the top speed of helicopters at high altitude and, in particular, their manoeuvrability," explains Kai Richter from the DLR Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology in Gottingen. In addition, the resulting vibration compromises passenger comfort. Modern engines would be able to deliver significantly better flight performance were it not for these limitations.

"Stalling is one of the most serious problems in helicopter aerodynamics - and one of the most complex," says Richter. Generating a computer simulation of a moving rotor is significantly more complicated than modelling a fixed-wing aircraft.

Acrobatic marine mammals
When looking for ways to delay the onset of stalling in helicopters, researchers at Gottingen struck gold with humpback whales - which is somewhat surprising at first glance.

"These marine mammals are renowned for their great speed and acrobatic skills," says Holger Mai from the DLR Institute of Aeroelasticity. This is due to their unusually large pectoral fins, which have characteristic bumps along the front edge.

"Research has shown that these bumps cause stalling to occur significantly later underwater and increase buoyancy."

DLR researchers translated the idea of using bumps for delaying the onset of stalling to helicopter rotors, and patented it as Leading-Edge Vortex Generators (LEVoGs) "Flow phenomena in water are similar to those in air; they just need to be scaled accordingly," says Mai.

The artificial bumps on helicopters are smaller than those on a humpback whale; they have a diameter of six millimetres and weigh just 0.04 grams.

Experiments conducted in the wind tunnel were promising, enabling a test flight using the DLR Bo 105 research helicopter in Braunschweig to be successfully carried out, as part of the DLR SIMCOS (Advanced Simulation and Control of Dynamic Stall) project. 186 rubber LEVoGs were glued to each of the helicopter's four rotor blades.

"The pilots have already noticed a difference in the behaviour of the rotor blades," says Richter. The main objective of the initial test flight was to demonstrate the safety of this new technique. "The next step is a flight using special measuring equipment to accurately record the effects," Richter explains.

If the concept proves successful, DLR researchers hope that existing helicopters could be retrofitted at little expense. For new helicopters, contours could be milled into the front edges of existing titanium blade designs during the manufacturing process.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:14 AEST Singapore (AFP) Feb 2, 2012 - Singapore Airlines said Thursday its third-quarter net profit tumbled 53 percent from a year ago due to the impact of "persistently high" jet fuel prices.

Weak passenger and cargo demand from Europe -- grappling with a debt crisis -- also dragged profits lower.

The airline, considered a bellwether for the industry, said net profit in the three months to December fell to Sg$135.2 million ($108.5 million) from Sg$288.3 million.

"The persistently high jet fuel prices had adversely affected the group's performance," the airline said in a statement.

Revenue rose one percent to Sg$3.88 billion, but overall expenditure climbed at a faster pace of 12 percent to Sg$3.72 billion.

Fuel expenses alone increased 33 percent during the quarter. Fuel accounted for 40 percent of the company's expenditure, which was up seven percentage points from the year before, SIA said.

The airline painted a bleak outlook for the fourth quarter.

"Forward bookings continue to show signs of weakness in the final quarter of the financial year due to uncertainty in the global economy and the protracted eurozone debt crisis," it said.

The global air cargo market will also be weak as forward-looking trade indicators show waning consumer demand in major developed countries, the airline said.

"Passenger yields are expected to remain under pressure while cargo yields are expected to continue to decline," it said.

"As the price of jet fuel remains high and volatile, fuel costs continue to adversely impact the group's financial performance."

Brendan Sobie, a Singapore-based analyst with the consultancy Centre for Aviation, said the fall in SIA's net profit was in line with that of other carriers.

"Generally, the situation with airlines is that the profitability has been going down and the outlook for this year is not very good, so it's all in line (with) that," he told AFP.

"These results are not too surprising given the market situation," said Sobie, citing high fuel prices and a decline in demand from Europe and Japan as the chief reasons for SIA's lower profit.

Sobie however noted that SIA's regional wing, SilkAir, had a narrower decline in its operating profit which he said reflect the continued strength of Asian economies.

Unlike SIA, SilkAir operates only to destinations within Asia -- except Japan.

"The only part of Asia that's been weak in the last few quarters has been Japan, where again SIA has heavy exposure," Sobie said.

Japan's tourism industry was impacted by a major earthquake and tsunami that struck the country in March last year. The disasters also sparked a nuclear meltdown at a power plant, raising fears of a radiation leak.

SIA's profit slump mirrors dismal performances by other regional airlines such as Japan's All Nippon Airways, which saw its net profit for the nine months to December slashed 10 percent year-on-year.

Flag carrier Korean Air as well as India's largest private carrier Jet Airways recorded net losses in their full-year and quarterly earnings, respectively -- a reversal from net profits experienced a year earlier.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:14 AEST Hampton VA (SPX) Feb 03, 2012 - Leaner, greener flying machines for the year 2025 are on the drawing boards of three industry teams under contract to the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate's Environmentally Responsible Aviation Project.

Teams from The Boeing Company in Huntington Beach, Calif., Lockheed Martin in Palmdale, Calif., and Northrop Grumman in El Segundo, Calif., have spent the last year studying how to meet NASA goals to develop technology that would allow future aircraft to burn 50 percent less fuel than aircraft that entered service in 1998 (the baseline for the study), with 75 percent fewer harmful emissions; and to shrink the size of geographic areas affected by objectionable airport noise by 83 percent.

"The real challenge is we want to accomplish all these things simultaneously," said ERA project manager Fay Collier. "It's never been done before. We looked at some very difficult metrics and tried to push all those metrics down at the same time."

So NASA put that challenge to industry - awarding a little less than $11 million to the three teams to assess what kinds of aircraft designs and technologies could help meet the goals. The companies have just given NASA their results.

"We'll be digesting the three studies and we'll be looking into what to do next," said Collier.

Boeing's advanced vehicle concept centers around the company's now familiar blended wing body design as seen in the sub-scale remotely piloted X-48, which has been wind tunnel tested at NASA's Langley Research Center and flown at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center.

One thing that makes this concept different from current airplanes is the placement of its Pratt and Whitney geared turbofan engines. The engines are on top of the plane's back end, flanked by two vertical tails to shield people on the ground from engine noise.

The aircraft also would feature an advanced lightweight, damage tolerant, composite structure; technologies for reducing airframe noise; advanced flight controls; hybrid laminar flow control, which means surfaces designed to reduce drag; and long-span wings which improve fuel efficiency.

Lockheed Martin took an entirely different approach. Its engineers proposed a box wing design, in which a front wing mounted on the lower belly of the plane is joined at the tips to an aft wing mounted on top of the plane.

The company has studied the box wing concept for three decades, but has been waiting for lightweight composite materials, landing gear technologies, hybrid laminar flow and other tools to make it a viable configuration.

Lockheed's proposal combines the unique design with a Rolls Royce Liberty Works Ultra Fan Engine. This engine has a bypass ratio that is approximately five times greater than current engines, pushing the limits of turbofan technology.

Northrop Grumman chose to embrace a little of its company's history, going back to the 1930s and '40s, with its advanced vehicle concept. Its design is a flying wing, championed by Northrop founder Jack Northrop, and reminiscent of its B-2 aircraft. Four high-bypass engines, provided by Rolls Royce and embedded in the upper surface of the aerodynamically efficient wing would provide noise shielding.

The company's expertise in building planes without the benefit of a stabilizing tail would be transferred to the commercial airline market. The Northrop proposal also incorporates advanced composite materials and engine and swept wing laminar flow control technologies.

What the studies revealed is that NASA's goals to reduce fuel consumption, emissions and noise are indeed challenging. The preliminary designs all met the pollution goal of eliminating landing and takeoff emissions of nitrogen oxides by 50 percent. All still have a little way to go to meet the other two challenges. All the designs were very close to a 50-percent fuel burn reduction, but noise reduction capabilities varied.

"All of the teams have done really great work during this conceptual design study," say Mark Mangelsdorf, ERA Project chief engineer.

"Their results make me excited about how interesting and different the airplanes on the airport ramp could look in 20 years. Another great result of the study is that they have really helped us focus where to invest our research dollars over the next few years," he said.

NASA's ERA project officials say they believe all the goals can be met if small gains in noise and fuel consumption reduction can be achieved in addition to those projected in the industry studies.

The results shed light on the technology and design hurdles airline manufacturers face in trying to design lean, green flying machines and will help guide NASA's environmentally responsible aviation investment strategy for the second half of its six-year project.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:14 AEST Tokyo (AFP) Jan 31, 2012 - Japan's All Nippon Airways on Tuesday said its net profit for the nine months to December fell 10.0 percent from a year earlier due to an increase in corporate taxes.

The carrier, which operated the maiden commercial flight of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner late last year, said group net profit in the period was 33.8 billion yen ($443 million), down from 37.5 billion yen a year earlier.

Revenue rose 3.0 percent from the same period to 1.07 trillion yen as brisk international demand offset the impact of Japan's March 11 quake-tsunami disaster on domestic flights.

Operating profit rose 17.3 percent to 91.1 billion yen, but ANA's bottom line declined due to its tax payments going up by 14.6 billion yen, it said.

Sales of domestic passenger tickets were down 1.1 percent in the aftermath of the March disaster, which was followed by meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

But sales on international passenger services gained 12.5 percent as demand for overseas flights recovered after initially also being affected by the catastrophe, the firm said.

ANA raised its full-year operating profit forecast to 90 billion yen from 70 billion yen, while leaving its sales and net profit projections for the year to March unchanged at 1.4 trillion yen and 20 billion yen respectively.

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:14 AEST Stanford CA (SPX) Jan 27, 2012 - Each fall at technical universities across the world, a new crop of aeronautical and astronautical engineering graduate students settle in for the work that will consume them for the next several years. For many, their first experience in these early months is not with titanium or aluminum or advanced carbon-fiber materials that are the stuff of airplanes, but with computer code.

Thanks to a team of engineers in the Aerospace Design Lab at Stanford University, however, those days of coding may soon go the way of the biplane. At a recent demonstration, the Stanford team debuted "Stanford University Unstructured" (SU2), an open-source application that models the effects of fluids moving over aerodynamic surfaces such as fuselages, hulls, propellers, rotors, wings, rockets and re-entry vehicles.

Dubbed SU2 for short, the application incorporates everything engineers need to perform a complete design loop for optimizing the shapes of aerospace systems. While commercial programs offering similar capabilities are available, they can be prohibitively expensive. SU2, on the other hand, can be downloaded for free from the lab's website.

In engineering circles, the discipline is known as computational fluid dynamics, or CFD. Creating custom software applications to accurately model the interactions of an object in flight can take months, even years, to write and perfect. And yet, when the student graduates, the software is often forgotten.

"These are incredibly complex calculations involving innumerable variables," said Tom Taylor, a doctoral candidate who studies the dynamics of fluid flows beyond the sound barrier. "Essentially, every student has to create their own code for their specific designs, even though the equations at the core are virtually identical."

Brainchild
SU2 is the product of a team led by research associate Francisco Palacios, in the Aerospace Design Lab, who works on complex simulations of the propulsion systems in hypersonic vehicles.

Palacios witnessed all the coding the students around him were doing and, realizing that much of it was built upon a common foundation, decided to combine their work. Palacios, together with lab director Juan Alonso, then led a team of multi-disciplinary engineers in compiling, debugging and documenting the application that became SU2.

"The commercially available software is out of reach for most students," said Palacios, "and does not allow for modifications to the source code that are needed for doctoral-level research. It occurred to us that all this time and effort could be combined and packaged to allow students to focus more on their research problems and less on writing code."

Dynamic applications
Fluid dynamics applies to any three-dimensional structure moving through a medium, including air, water, chemicals and even blood.

"People can use this for everything from rockets to the design of more efficient wind turbines, and even boats, racecars and more," said PhD candidate Sean Copeland, who specializes in re-entry of space vehicles.

"Just plug in the geometry of your plane or wing or rotor, and tell the program to increase lift or reduce drag, for instance," said Tom Economon, a doctoral student working on efficient and quiet engine design. "SU2 goes to work, optimizing the shape for you in an automated way, showing you exactly where to alter your designs for maximum effect."

"I often work on modeling plasmas," said PhD candidate Amrita Lonkar, who studies flow control over wind turbines. "It was really easy - so easy - to modify the program for my research. For me, it reduced about a year's worth of work to just four months."

Open source, open possibilities
SU2 is a freely customizable software package. In true open-source fashion, developers, designers and engineers are encouraged to make the software their own, customizing the application to fit their needs.

"We welcome corrections, additions and improvements to our application," said Palacios. "They help everyone."

Of all SU2's many virtues, however, the most promising is perhaps its documentation, including a quick-start guide and in-depth tutorials. Absent or inadequate documentation is a problem that plagues many scientific computer codes.

"These materials are exhaustive and continually updated," said Taylor. "Students can hit the ground running."

Like the source code, the documentation and training are available via the website, which also includes a public forum where users and developers can seek advice and post support questions to a growing SU2 community.

"We are proud of SU2. We hope that students will use it to focus not on coding, but on their research creating better aerodynamic designs," said Palacios. "This is, after all, the real reason they came to school."

]]> Thu, 09 FEB 2012 09:06:14 AEST Subscribe to our daily selection of space, military, environment and energy newsletters responseText http://visitor.constantcontact.com/manage/optin/ea?v=0016gbbKsaiGSpQFojVO8ZoHw%3D%3D