Clean Sky 2

Clean Sky 2 is one of the largest European research program developing innovative, technology aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions and noise levels produced by aircraft.

A member of Clean Sky 2 since February 2017, Honeywell is actively involved with a variety of different projects under this research umbrella, including Project TAIRA.

What is Project TAIRA?

Project TAIRA is aligned to the Regional Aircraft work plan and our involvement relates to work package 2.4 on Innovative Flight Control Systems. The objective of the work package is to enable reliable electro-mechanical actuation, the last step needed to dispose of the aircraft hydraulic system. There are many advantages of this, including:

• Significant reduction in aircraft weight
• Reduced specific fuel consumption
• Reduced maintenance costs
• Elimination of hydraulic oil
• Increased modularity of the aircraft

The overall project objective is to develop an aileron actuation subsystem for regional aircraft consisting of two Electro-Mechanical Actuators (EMA), planned for active-active operation of single aileron, and two dedicated Electronic Actuator Control Units (EACU), and to demonstrate its maturity. The subsystem is being designed to achieve the following high-level objectives:

1. Compact and lightweight EMA design
2. Safe actuation system
3. Easy and cost effective maintenance

Key Milestones:

April 2017 – Project TAIRA launched

April 2017 – October 2017 – Requirement definition phase during which we defined the most appropriate actuation system and carried out detailed trade studies

October 2017 – July 2018 – Preliminary design phase during which time we significantly progressed with the actuation system design

July 2018 – August 2019 – Development phase, during which time the technical team started the detailed design of the Actuation Unit (AU).  This consisted of creating hundreds of mechanical and electrical components, as well as completing technical analysis on those parts and building a prototype AU to validate performance of the components

August 2019 – September 2020 - Manufacturing of 4 AUs has commenced.  3 of those AUs will be delivered for testing on the dedicated Iron Bird simulator, while the remaining AU will be used for environmental testing at Honeywell.  This phase is due to be complete in September 2020 followed by support provided at customer site.