RAeS Cierva Named Lecture 2024
The De la Cierva Lecture is named after Juan De la Cierva, FRAeS, an aeronautical engineer who pioneered rotary flight. In 1926 with the backing of the Weir brothers he formed the Cierva Autogiro Company and it was his development of rotor blade design and articulated rotor blades, which played a major role in the first successful helicopter in 1936.
For this RAeS Cierva Named Lecture, we were joined by Brice Makinadjian, Chief Engineer of Racer, who discussed the engineering challenges involved in development of this pioneering rotorcraft, the flight test programme, and how its technologies could be implemented in the production aircraft of the future.
Airbus Helicopters’ Racer demonstrator, developed in the frame of the European Research Clean Sky 2 project, made its first flight, in Marignane, France in April this year. This important milestone launched the flight campaign which will take two years and will aim to progressively open the aircraft’s flight envelope and demonstrate its high speed capabilities.
Optimised for a cruise speed of more than 400 km/h, the Racer demonstrator aims to achieve the best trade-off between speed, cost-efficiency, and mission performance. The Racer also targets a fuel consumption reduction of around 20%, compared to current generation helicopters of the same class, thanks to aerodynamic optimisation and an innovative eco-mode propulsion system. Developed with Safran Helicopter Engines, the hybrid-electrical eco-mode system allows one of the two Aneto-1X engines to be paused while in cruise flight, thus contributing to cutting CO2 emissions. The Racer also aims to demonstrate how its particular architecture can contribute to lowering its operational acoustic footprint.