Airbus Helicopters Disruptive Lab, which was announced at the company’s annual results briefing at the end of last year, is now five flights in to a programme designed to prove technologies that are aimed at reducing carbon footprint through fuel burn reduction. The Disruptive Lab, in contrast to the company’s H130-based Flight Lab, which looks at performance improvement through new technology retrofit, is intended to prove concepts for future aircraft.
The flight test programme is advancing at the rate of around one flight a week. “It’s important to fly usefully rather than just build hours,” explained Vice President of Research and Innovation Thomaz Krysinski, “you have to have to take the time to reduce the data and study what you’ve actually learnt from each flight before you can understand what is needed for the next one.”
The project is based on three cornerstones – drag optimisation, weight reduction and the development of a fully parallel hybrid power source. The first two elements, which offer immediate benefits, are among the current test points, while the hybrid power source remains a task for future testing, although Airbus said that decisions relating to the choice of the electric engine and battery elements are “under evaluation but will be made soon”. Meanwhile, elements of the programme aimed at twin-engine operations will come to fruition “later this year”.
