CONCEPT DESIGN | ELECTRIC AVIATION GROUP
The Future of Hybrid Electric Flight
The Future of Hybrid Electric Flight
Starting up a new product business – raising investment, gaining buy in within industry and warming up new customers to build a market – is tough. How do you convey your concept when it doesn’t exist yet? Doing this in the aviation industry is even tougher.
Aviation is big business, with vast resources required to launch a new aircraft platform; clearly aircraft concepts are less about aesthetics than achieving a highly complex functional balance between physics, regulation and commercial constraints. Yet despite all the rationality, getting buy-in and backing still requires winning people’s hearts.
Right now, developing sustainable air travel is the most urgent but difficult challenge facing aviation. There is growing pressure on the big aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Airbus to respond with meaningful innovation. Perhaps Covid-19 turmoil will be the needed catalyst; however, truly disruptive innovation is unlikely to come from within the aviation establishment.
Like Tesla has done in the car industry, it probably needs new players like Electric Aviation Group (EAG) to truly disrupt the status quo. EAG is a team with extraordinary experience and insight within the aviation industry. Rather than just focusing on one area like creating an electric powered turbine, EAG have been cleverly innovating across the whole aircraft system to come up with a ‘comprehensive package’ of technologies, to form their new Hybrid Electric Regional Aircraft (HERA) platform. Consequently HERA is the first very low carbon design able to carry 70+ passengers on short haul journeys. Their 20+ patents cover technologies such as mixed gas turbine and electric power, energy recovery on landing, fast recovery battery systems with an aerodynamically lower drag features.
Their next challenge is raising significant funding to develop the HERA demonstrator. And to do this they needed good imagery to tell a compelling story and convey the idea to investors. As the saying goes ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’. But not all imagery is equal… it had to be dramatic, but not fanciful – to get attention without being ‘shot down’.
A couple of recommendations led them to approach Realise. But there was a catch. Not only did they need imagery, but they hadn’t yet drawn up the plane for all this technology to go into.
They wanted us to design an aircraft!
Being able to talk the right technical language with our customers is important, as effective conversations is vital to a successful project.
Our team comprises talented individuals with a variety of back grounds – mechanical engineers, product designers and branding experts to name a few, which makes us pretty adaptable and able to marry the commercial with the creative! We’re also lucky for this project, that Andrew’s background in Naval Archtecture, gives him an understanding of hydro/aero-dynamics, and that he also happens to have a lifelong passion for aircraft, inherited from his family (his grandfather was one of the first navy pilots to fly off a ship and helped organise the first flight over Everest!)
Understanding EAG’s business goals focused us on two critical aims:
After some deep technical conversations with EAG, we quickly modelled several designs around the arrangements of their technology and the aerodynamic options for further discussion.
For example, we investigated four different tail fin arrangements with aim of optimising stability and drag. Through an iterative process, this resulted in four separate designs with the ‘U-tail’ being selected as the both the ‘prettiest’ and most efficient. The U-tail borrows some ideas from the way nature has arranged bird tails, simplifying the tail into just two main horizontal stabilisers. This firstly reduces interaction drag between the stabilisers and the fuselage, and secondly by making these more raised angle (or dihedral) than normal, creates stability that allows the vertical stabilisers at the end to be smaller. These vertical stabilisers then also act as ‘tailets’ (like you see on the end of wings) to reduce the tip vortex drag. This allows the horizonal tailplanes to also then more efficiently share some of the lift in flight, thereby slightly reducing the area of the wing needed. It’s a smart way of arranging the various parts to share jobs and together become more efficient than when they are working independantly.
Once the final aircraft concept was agreed, we needed to show it off as best we could! Researching other people’s concept aircraft images, we very realised that the standard ‘white stripey plane’ on blue sky was over-done and boring. Our aircraft needed to feel more real-world, dramatic, adventurous, and exciting!
Firstly we experimented with some simple ‘EAG’ liveries with the aim – rather like dressing a fashion model – of creating a classy and contemporary look, whilst enhancing HERA’s unique curves! At the same time, we reviewed thousands of potential sky scene images, sketching and storyboarding, alongside quick renders, to find compositions that would show off all the unique features of HERA, in a range of dynamic positions, in emotionally engaging dramatic skies.
Once each scene was planned, we used the backgrounds to match the colour and reflections to set up the lighting in the renders, with hours spent experimenting to get good effects. But, there’s only so much the rendering software can do – so the last task was to artistically polish the images in Photoshop, not least adding effects like the spin blur of the propellers.
EAG and Realise are really pleased with the result of our collaboration. With relatively little investment in time, input or resource they’ve got exactly what they hoped for and more, with these images being instrumental to them communicating their concept for HERA, effectively lifting EAG from a company with a collection of excellent patents, to being the manufacturer of a serious future aircraft platform solution. In their words:
“It was a surprisingly good experience working with Andrew and his team to realise our aircraft concept. Not only were they responsive and passionate about the creative aspect, they clearly understand the aerodynamics of flight, so we had some very sensible, productive conversations about alternative layouts and features of our aircraft. I am delighted they managed to so rapidly turn this into such a good looking aircraft, not something that even the top aero-engineers often manage to do in my experience.”
Dr Norman Wood, CTO Electric Aviation Group
An additional benefit of the CAD is we’ve been able to create new images quickly for EAG for a tailored pitch deck, to help an investment partner or an airline to visualise HERA in their custom livery, building excitement and confidence.
For example, in the lead up to the 2020 Farnborough International Airshow the British Government announced the Jet Zero initiative. At EAG’s request, Realise returned to the scene, and created the UK branded livery you see here, helping EAG reinforce HERA as the next step solution to achieve the UK’s Jet Zero ambitions. This has helped open the door to sucuring high profile meetings, giving EAG further credibility to attract leading industry partners such as GE Aviation in their newly formed Jet Zero Coalition.
With a team that loves to travel but is equally concerned about Climate Change, Realise are excited to be building such a positive relationship with EAG, and together using our creativity and knowledge for truly meaningful contribution towards our sustainable future.
If you want to know more about the challenges and opportunities around Sustainable Aviation, head on over to our article about the barriers to future aircraft technologies.
Sustainable aviation is the current mission impossible with a spotlight on solving the problem of electric flight. Realise have been working with a new start-up and innovative disruptor to force a change in the aircraft industry and have designed a hybrid-electric aircraft.
The World’s first Hot Chocolate Shaker
Design For Manufacture
User Centred Design
FDA Food Rating
Sector: Consumer products
Design a versatile home/cafe barista tool to shake up the hot chocolate market!
Al Garnsworthy of The Chocolate Society discovered that by shaking up quality chocolate and not just stirring it, you can create an ultra smooth and exceptionally tasty hot chocolate drink. The only problem with this method is the spray of hot liquid when you open your container.
Not to be deterred and identifying a great opportunity to expand his existing product line, Al asked us to join him in his onsite kitchen in Somerset where we very willingly tried his experimental new hot chocolate drinks.
Think cocktail shakers! Think theatre! Think of the best hot chocolate ever! Seeking an easy to use, easy to clean and most importantly fun container that was more James Bond than the local corner shop, Al had found it and he wanted to bring it to his customers.
As exceptional Chocolatiers based in rural countryside, the company had already established itself with an enviable reputation as producers of fresh chocolate truffles, caramels and chocolate bars. Taking the next steps in their business with a physical product would help elevate their market position further.
Recognising a key challenge for designing a vessel to contain hot drinks was the necessity of overcoming the expansion of hot air and increased pressure, especially during shaking and Al sought the expertise of the Realise Team.
Several design routes were explored on paper, thinking through the various mechanisms that could be used to combat the main issue of increased pressure within the vessel, as well as many aesthetic directions to find the perfect fit for The Chocolate Society’s brand.
Exploring a cap that would automatically ‘pop’ to accommodate the expansion of air when shaking hot liquid, the team calculated the increase in air volume required (driven by guideline fill levels) to ensure that all designs were feasible from the outset. Coupled with identifying a suitable silicon material, Santoprene TPR, offered the required flexibility, repeatability and thermal resistance properties early on in the development process to ensure performance risks were minimised quickly.
Seeking a modern and premium looking product that was also safe to use was also high on requirements list.
Replicating double-walled glass in food-grade Tritan plastic the team created a design that utilises a natural air gap that prevents the container getting too hot or cold. This also allows the user to still see the contents internally without the obstruction of a silicon grip or heat shield, and minimise the number of parts to be assembled.
Producing a number of prototypes internally proved critical, allowing the team to continuously test the performance of the product throughout its development, looking specifically at pouring, expansion of the vessel, heat transfer and thread performance. Keeping an eye on manufacture costs was essential to The Chocolate Society to ensure that it was not only a viable product to manufacture, but also cost sensitive to the end customer.
These iterative prototypes also enabled the opportunity to have early conversations with manufacturing partners to address costs and design improvements. Ensuring that the product functioned as expected before the customer invested in higher cost visual aids and high end prototypes for investor pitches and user testing also reduces project risk.
As with all of our projects, Al and the team at The Chocolate Society were kept in close collaboration throughout the whole product development cycle.
This was to ensure that they remained in control of the direction of the end product, whilst at the same time we were able to share our own knowledge to ensure the best outcome for their business. This also included advice for their Kickstarter campaign which ultimately gained the backing of over 1600 people.
On completion of all final prototype testing and agreeing the correct material selection in accordance with FDA Approvals, Realise generated all required technical documentation for the shakers two part enclosure, ready for handover to the selected manufacturer.
It was very important to The Chocolate Society to keep manufacture within the UK. Although this comes at an increased price point, it meant that Al and the Team were much more involved in the manufacturing process and could therefore personally inspect first-off parts much more easily than with an overseas manufacturer.
Initially, final production involves a lot of process optimisation to begin producing parts of an ideal quality. Sometimes tooling modifications are also required to reach a perfect functional/aesthetic blend, an area that Realise is an expert in.
Realise have the ability to introduce customers to manufacturing partners and oversee production runs and in this case the product was ultimately injection moulded by a company in the South of England.
The Hot Chocolate Shaker has gone on to become a big success at The Chocolate Society, winning rave reviews in the media and online.
So what are you waiting for, head on over to their website and then throw in your favourite chocolate bar, and maybe a cheeky tipple and give it a shake!
Inspired by a passion for the mountains and following a recent trip to ISPO 2020 in Munich, Realise’s Tom Launders shares some of his thoughts on the toxic relationship between brands, products and users in the sports industry, and where we as product designers can make an impact.
