"We are not at all at the end of the story," Charles Champion, executive vice president of engineering for Airbus, says. "There's still a great future for aviation."
Aerospace's Hybrid Revolution
Honeywell -- a New Jersey-based diversified technology and manufacturing company -- is already testing with Safran, a French high-technology company, an electric green taxi system that, like Airbus' plan, involves powering the wheels. Honeywell's system uses the auxiliary power unit generator to provide power to the wheels to allow the aircraft to taxi without using the main engines.
"There are a number of us that believe when you look off into the future, this is something like hybrid cars," Witwer says. "This is an analogous kind of approach. The time is clearly now to move away from inefficient engine power."
Parker Hannifin Corp. (IW 500/92), an Ohio-based diversified manufacturer that provides a number of systems for today's aircraft – everything from flight control systems to engine and fuel systems -- is working with Airbus on the integration of hydrogen-powered fuel cell technology into the electrical system of its aircraft.
"Fuel cell technology exists today and has for many years. Now, we're taking it and transitioning it to an aerospace application," says Mark Czaja, vice president of technology and innovation for Parker Hannifin. "This is not just putting fuel cells on the airplane. It's something you have to be aligned with the aircraft manufacturers on."
Czaga expects to have a flight demonstration program in place by the middle of this decade.
Parker Hannifin is also taking fly-by-wire and power-by-wire to another level. The company is working on embedding more advanced health monitoring into its systems.
While the existing systems already have monitors that indicate when a problem arises, similar to the warning lights in cars, Czaja has his team working on a more advanced system. Rather than just identifying a black and white problem, the monitors would provide shades of preventive knowledge.
For example, instead of a indicating when a system is down, the monitoring devices would indicate when there's a variation in the vibration of a pump, which could be an early indicator of a system failure.
