Spotlight on partners series

Following up on our spotlight series, in which we will be highlighting the members of this project, showcasing their expertise, goals and aspirations, we introduce to you the French national research centre in Aeronautics and Space (OFFICE NATIONAL D’ETUDES ET DE RECHERCHES AEROSPATIALES) better known as ONERA.

 

ONERA in a few figures : 

• A public enterprise of an industrial and commercial nature founded in 1946
• Missions:
  • Develop and orient research in Aerospace
  • Design, develop and deploy required means to conduct this research
  • Disseminate results and promote their use by industry (aerospace and other)
• 3 application domains : Defense, Aeronautics, Space
• In 2024, ONERA account for 2200 employees with more than 1750 researchers
• The activity is distributed over 7 departments, each one providing experimental facilities, advanced simulations tools tailored to their various research domains
• The ONERA Wind Tunnel Division offers in addition a suite of wind tunnels matching a large variety of client’s requirements
• The ONERA departments and facilities are located all around France (Châtillon, Meudon, Lille, Toulouse, Fauga-Mauzac, Salon de provence, Modane-Avrieux) with Headquarters based
• ONERA is an active member of European Research Establishments in Aeronautics (EREA) association.

 

Three ONERA departments contribute toward EXAELIA’s objectives with their multidisciplinary expertise:

• The department of System Design and Information Processing (DTIS) focuses its activities firstly on the conceptual design of a Future Long Range Aircraft based on the Blended Wing Body (BWB) architecture using SAF using the code FAST-OAD. Secondly, it is responsible for the development of the BWB “expendable” flight demonstrator up to flight tests in Toulouse including advanced measurement systems.
• The Departments of Aerodynamics, Aeroelasticity, Acoustics (DAAA) works toward the development of the Flying Testbed families with high fidelity aerodynamic simulations in order to validate the final outer shape of the BWB design and to analyse in-flight distortions associated with the propulsion flying test bed.
• The Department of Materials and Structures Department (DMAS) concentrates its effort not only on the design and test of a stiffened panel using a lattice material architecture to achieve a key maturation step for this technology but also on the structural design of the Future Long Range Aircraft BWB concept with high fidelity models to reduce weight uncertainties.

 

Related projects ONERA was/is involved in, and which will benefit EXAELIA:

• CICAV (Internal funding) : Integrated Design of a Blended Wing Body Configuration including the development of the associated sizing and synthesis code (Long Range mission)
• NACOR (Clean Sky 2) : Integrated Design of a Blended Wing Body Configuration for SMR missions with an enhancement of the Overall Aircraft Design process to take into account high fidelity information
• Large Passenger Aircraft Scaled Flight Demonstrator (Clean Sky 2) : coordination of the demonstrator development and technical activity focusing on the transposition laws between a small scale aircraft and its full scale reference.
• STARAC (Internal funding) : first assessment of Lattice Material architecture at very low TRL through numerical simulations and prototype testing.

 

ONERA achieves technology maturation and system level assessments through a combination of numerical simulations and experimental tests (ground and flight).