Virtual Campus - LR

Faculty of aerospace... ... (Area)

How do you make an airplane more sustainable? How do you design a satellite that can monitor temperatures on Earth? You will learn that and much more in the Bachelor Aerospace Engineering. In this degree you will study courses such as aerodynamics, lightweight materials and structures, aircraft and missile propulsion, the dynamics of an aircraft and satellite orbital mechanics. More information about the study can be found here.

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Material lab (Area)

This room is mainly used by research and students who are doing a masters in material sciences. In this room they try and get as much knowledge as possible on different materials and how they behave during different temperatures and conditions. This is very important because aircraft and spacecraft have to deal with extremely low temperatures.

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Cyberzoo (Area)

The CyberZoo is a research and test laboratory for flying and walking swarm robots in the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering. The idea is that the robots will work together independently without the help of humans. The high nets protects the researchers from the flying robots and drones.

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The building (Point)

The blue coloured faculty of Aerospace Engineering (AE) is 16 floors tall and has been in use as of 1965. In this building, lectures are given and research is conducted. For example research into aerodynamic problems, stronger materials, new satellite designs, more efficient flight routes and the overall advancement of aircraft and spacecraft. An example of this is the collaboration with KLM on the design of the ‘flying-V’, a new type of aircraft shaped like a V. This aircraft will be able to use almost all of its surface area to generate lift, making the aircraft more efficient.

Euro-enaer ee-10 eag... ... (Point)

Since November 2014, the prototype of the Euro-Enaer EE-10 Eaglet PH-EAG has been hanging inside of the central hall of the faculty. The two-seater plane has an original take-off weight of 850 kg and a wingspan of 8.7 meters. The aircraft has been used for tests in the past and is also called the "eagle". The 550 kg fuselage did not fit through the entrance doors, so it was a challenging job to connect the plane to the ceiling of the hall. Currently the faculty uses another aircraft to conduct experiments with. In the 3rd year of the bachelor, students will get the opportunity to fly in the aircraft and to conduct experiments during the flight.

Freshman practicum (Point)

1st year bachelor students will get the chance to put the knowledge they acquired into practice. In this room, the students get the opportunity to completely design and produce the load bearing structure of the wing, the so-called ‘wingbox’. At the end of the project, a winning team is chosen based on the weight of the wingbox (as light as possible) and the maximum stress it could sustain.

The load bearing str... ... (Point)

Here you can see the inside of a wing. Noticeable is the many empty spaces in the wing, those spaces usually filled with fuel. Furthermore it can be seen that stiffeners have been added to increase the stiffness. Due to the combination of stiffeners and high quality materials, the wing remains both stiff and light.

Composites (Point)

Composites are simply put materials that consist out of multiple components, such as reinforced concrete. It can also be a combination of plastic with reinforced fibers in order to create a very strong but lightweight material such as carbon fiber. Making use of these materials in the aerospace industry is very tempting as they are lightweight and very strong. A disadvantage of composites is that they are, compared to for example metals, very strong in one specific direction but are weaker to loads coming from multiple directions. There is also almost no yielding before ultimate failure, this means there are less indicators before ultimate failure occurs which can have disastrous consequences. Also inspection of these types of panels is more difficult during maintenance as there are less visual indicators of deterioration. The orange robotic arm that you can see is used for wrapping fibers across the tube. These fibers are then covered in a resin after which the fibers are wrapped around the tube again in a different direction. This process is repeated until a lightweight, uniform strong cylinder is created.

Glare (Point)

One of the composites that is currently being used in aircraft is Glare. This composite has been developed at this faculty and is named Glass Laminate Aluminum Reinforced Epoxy. It is currently used for panels of the Airbus A380 and consists of alternating layers of aluminum between 0.3 to 0.4mm thick and fiberglass fabric which is impregnated with synthetic resin. What makes this material unique is that its better resistant to fatigue due to the fiberglass. Its also very strong in all direction which makes it a perfect candidate for usage in the fuselage of an aircraft. The fuselage of an aircraft is typically around 1.5mm thick and thicker around the cuts (windows and doors).

Mechanical tensile m... ... (Point)

These setups are used to test fatigue, load capacity and strength of materials. Fatigue of a material can be tested by repeatedly applying pressure to a material and measuring when it shows wear or breaks. During this process a material is pressed or stretched at a constant speed or a constant force until it fails. You can imagine for example a paperclip which you bent multiple times until it breaks. In these machines, years of fatigue loading can be applied to materials or structures within a few days or weeks.

Sirius laser (Point)

This advanced laser is used for laser drilling and material cutting. It is a 1kW excimer laser that generates 1 Joule of pulses with an optical wavelength of 308nm. A pulse lasts only 200 nanoseconds with a density greater than 5 Joules per centimetre. These properties ensure that the laser can cut with great accuracy through extremely strong materials.

Obstacles (Point)

Obstacles in the form of mars craters provide a challenge for walking robots, for example. Or think of windows in buildings and other obstacles for the flying robots to maneuver around.

Delfly nimble (Point)

The Nimble is a robot in a line of "micro-air vehicles". The robot can fly in all directions, unlike other robots that fly more like an airplane. It has a wingspan of 30 centimeters and copies the flight behavior of a fruit fly. The Nimble tested important assumptions about how a fruit fly performs escape maneuvers. It is very frustrating when fruit flies keep escaping our attempts to crush them.

Cameras (Point)

Twelve high-tech cameras are used to analyze how walking and flying robots move and work together. With these cameras, the 3D coordinates and postures of the robots can be accurately analyzed during experiments.

The material lab (Point)

This room is mainly used by research and students who are doing a masters in material sciences. In this room they try to get as much knowledge as possible on different materials and how they behave during different temperatures and conditions. This is very important because aircraft and spacecraft have to deal with extremely low temperatures.

Aircraft hangar (Point)

The aircraft hangar is being used for student practical’s. Students get practical’s about how an airplane is constructed. It is therefore no surprise that many aircraft parts can be found in the hall. They may take a look inside the cockpit of an F16 fighter jet or look at the inside of different engines.