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Leonardo Times SEPTEMBER 2013INTRODUCTION
The Leonardo Times had the privilege of interviewing Jan van Toor, Vice President at EADS, head of GIN Innovative Concepts & Long Term Scenarios, when he visited the faculty for a lecture on the future of aviation. Jan van Toor spoke about the various projects he has worked on and is currently working on, the future of the aerospace industry and what opportuni-ties lay ahead for TU Delft aerospace en-gineering students. He spends his time at EADS looking into the future, design-ing advanced concepts and initiatdesign-ing research eff orts to analyze the feasibility and aff ordability of advanced projects in the near and far future. By working to identify projects in which EADS divisions can work together, he is in his words ‘fi sh-ing for synergies’. By joinsh-ing together various engineering eff orts at Airbus, Eurocopter, Cassidian and Astrium, he hopes to initiate projects that will create
solutions to the various challenges facing the aerospace industry today and in the future. The VoltAir and ZEHST concept air-craft are two of the projects Jan van Toor has been working on recently, which he spoke about in some detail.
VOLTAIR
VoltAir is one of the advanced concepts within EADS, which consists of an ‘All Electric Aircraft’ and could be the solution to the world’s environmental challenges. Aviation has a signifi cant environmental footprint, as a lot of energy is needed to fl y from A to B and aircraft emit most of their pollutants in very sensitive layers of the atmosphere. Additionally, given that weight is such a big driver in the design, construction and operation of an aircraft, low-weight solutions such as the VoltAir could be very benefi cial.
This concept aircraft powers through the
sky using two counter-rotating and open-rotor propellers that run on effi ciently stored electrical batteries. However, for it to be feasible, Mr Van Toor would re-quire batteries with high energy den-sity, which have not been developed yet. Batteries are still heavy and weigh the aircraft down. As such, a solution must be found to effi ciently store energy in a light-weight and cost-eff ective manner. Van Toor is waiting for a brilliant mind to invent an energy storage system which is much more light-weight and effi cient than using current battery technology. This, he believes, would revolutionize the aerospace industry and modern day com-mercial transport.
ZEHST
Besides fl ying more effi ciently, EADS In-novation Works has also been looking at fl ying faster, at hypersonic speeds even. The Zero Emission High Speed
Trans-Jan van Toor, VP within EADS Corporate Technical Offi ce CTO,
gives a look into the future of aviation
Jan van Toor spends his time at EADS Innovation Works looking into the future,
designing advanced concepts and initiating research eff orts to analyse the feasibility
and aff ordability of such a project. He recently visited the Faculty of Aerospace
Engineering to give a lecture, and agreed to an interview with the Leonardo Times
about the future of commercial air transport as EADS sees it unfolding over the next
few decades.
TEXT Nout van Zon, BSc Student Aerospace Engineering, Editor Leonardo Times
THE FUTURE OF COMMERCIAL AIR TRANSPORT
Interview
EADS
SEPTEMBER 2013 Leonardo Times
23
port (ZEHST) project involves such a high-speed aircraft that could transport around sixty passengers at truly dazzling speeds of up to Mach 5.
EADS is currently investigating the feasi-bility of this project and also whether hy-personic transport would be able to meet the needs of the aviation market over the coming decades. The research and devel-opment costs that come with ZEHST will be substantial, but perhaps new enabling technologies will make a concept such as ZEHST aff ordable in thirty to forty years. The best start of a high risk project such as ZEHST is, according to Mr Van Toor, the military market, where the interest for hy-personic technologies may be a lot higher and the available budgets signifi cantly larger. ZEHST has a lot of potential, but it does remain a mode of transport marked by a very high energy consumption and as such, it can turn out to be very costly indeed. Possibly suborbital space trans-port could provide the same time savings at lower operating costs and environ-mental impact, given that a large portion of the mission takes place outside of the atmosphere.
ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES
Mr Van Toor sees a couple of potential technological innovations that, if they were to come to pass, would enable many new products and could bring signifi cant
improvements to existing products. In terms of advanced concept design, Van Toor expects a higher degree of integra-tion of the propulsion system with the airframe and fuselage in the future. This, in turn, would have a positive eff ect on the fl ow around the aircraft and thus re-duce drag, while increasing lift. The main design drivers for an energy effi cient air-craft are excellent aerodynamics and an extremely lightweight construction. Ef-fi cient aerodynamics would in turn allow for even fewer batteries, further improv-ing the aircraft performance by eliminat-ing weight. A higher degree of integration of the engines and the fuselage, com-bined with laminar wings for large trans-port aircraft are some of the new enabling technologies Mr Van Toor expects to see in aircraft in the coming decades.
WORKING AT EADS
“We lack a few thousand of engineers” was his response when asked about po-tential opportunities for Delft students of aerospace engineering. Having complet-ed his advanccomplet-ed concept design master himself here in Delft, he was happy to say that EADS sees the education at Delft as an excellent one. Because students follow aerospace-related courses from the fi rst year onwards, the aerospace engineering students at TU Delft fi t very well into the engineering profi le companies like EADS look for. Jan van Toor personally believes
that his education in Delft was a perfect preparation for the exciting career he has at EADS, as he states Delft is “among the best educations you can get for a start in aerospace engineering.”
However, in order to work at a globally acting company such as EADS, one does have to be a global actor themselves. One of the prerequisites for a job at EADS is to accept a certain degree of mobility and some ‘job hopping’ between the various business sectors of the EADS company. After a couple of years throughout Eu-rope, doing anything from aerodynamics to structures to management, Van Toor advises potential hopefuls to choose what you like most and go for it. Finally, it was good to hear from him that EADS has now developed a career path, not only for managers, but for engineers as well. This allows an engineer at EADS to get to the same top levels as an executive, receive the same pay and bonus and be honored for their work in their respective technical disciplines.
Figure 1. ZEHST by EADS Innovation Works pictured aloft showing
on-board propulsion systems Figure 2. ZEHST by EADS Innovation Works pictured at Schiphol
References
EADS website: http://www.eads.net
EADS
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