MALE UAV and its systems as basis of future definitions

Sergio Chiesa graduated (Master of Science in Aeronautical Engineering) at Politecnico di Torino in 1972 (December 18, 1972). From 1973 to 1975, he had been working for two years at M.R.C.A. TORNADO program in a Systems Engineering Company for the development and successive management of the Company Quality System. In 1976, he became Assistente di ruolo (Assistant Professor) in Aircraft Design at Istituto di Progetto di Aeromobili (Department of Aircraft Design), led by Professor Giuseppe Gabrielli (famous Italian aircraft designer of FIAT G55, G91 and G222 aircraft), at Politecnico di Torino. Under the influence of Professor Giuseppe Gabrielli, research activities of Sergio Chiesa focused on typical issues of aircraft design, such as conceptual design computerized methodologies, weight estimation methodologies and aircraft architectural configuration analysis. Sergio Chiesa has been teaching the undergraduate course of Aircraft on-board sub-systems (which later on changed contents and title to become the current undergraduate course of Aerospace Systems) since 1978, first as Assistant Professor (Professore incaricato), then (since 1980) as Associate Professor and eventually (since 1990) as Full Professor. In the last 10 years, Sergio Chiesa has also been teaching the undergraduate courses of Avionic Systems, Fundamentals of Aeronautic and Space Systems, Modeling, Simulation and Test of Aerospace Systems, Safety and Reliability of Aerospace Systems, Design of Space Missions, Design of Integrated Aerospace Systems and dedicated post-graduate courses. Since late 1970s, Sergio Chiesa has been working at research programs on systems engineering, aircraft design, logistic support, maintenance and design and development methodologies for aerospace systems and has been in charge of many programs, funded by public institutions, such as MIUR (Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research), ASI (Italian Space Agency), CIRA (Italian Aerospace Research Center) and Piemonte Region Government. For all these years, throughout all his scientific activities, Sergio Chiesa has always been interested in the design of new advanced aircraft, such as, in particular, transport aircraft of huge size (take-off gross weight equal to about 1,200 tons) in the 1980s, innovative trainer to enhance safety in the 1990s and light and ultra-light aircraft for personal transportation in 2000s. The design activities have always been characterized by a combination of study of new concepts, supported by analytical and numerical analyses, and of development and construction of small technology demonstrator platforms, covering a wide range of different categories of vehicles, such as airplanes, rovers, unmanned small boats and nanosatellites, carried out also thanks to the enthusiastic work of the students. Sergio Chiesa is author of more than 170 papers (journal and conference papers) and books or book chapters on the above mentioned topics. It is worth noting that because of the types of research activities of industrial interest aimed at designing and developing aerospace systems, Sergio Chiesa has always preferred to present the results of his research programs to congresses rather than to journals, because journals generally direct to smaller communities, most of the times, academic communities. Conference papers of Sergio Chiesa therefore greatly outnumber journal papers. Sergio Chiesa has been actively involved since 1994 in the activities of a group of European lecturers who have started together the European Workshop on Aircraft Design and Education (EWADE, www.aircraftdesign.org/). After the Madrid Workshop in 1994, it was agreed that workshops would be organized every two years, hosted by those participants who could find sufficient financial support from their university and from their local or national industry. Objectives are formulated as follows: to allow European lecturers concerned with aircraft design to continue their active collaboration; to discuss aircraft design issues with regard to research and education; and to enhance close cooperation with the aerospace industry for the two aspects mentioned above. To allow local organizers the greatest possible freedom and to keep the initiative as open as possible to those who are interested in joining the meeting at any time, it was decided not to establish a formal organization, at least for the time being. Apart from participating to all workshops, Sergio Chiesa organized EWADE in 2000 in Turin. Sergio Chiesa was member of the Editorial Board of the Aircraft Design journal, when the journal was published by Elsevier. Sergio Chiesa has also been actively involved into another group of east European lecturers, which has been named RRDPAE (Recent Research and Design Progress in Aeronautical Engineering and its influence on Education) and then READ (Research and Education in Aircraft Design) since 2000. Sergio Chiesa is the Editorial Review Board member of Proceedings IMechE, Part G: Journal of Aerospace Engineering, SAGE Publications Ltd. In 2009, Sergio Chiesa became external examiner in the post-graduate master course in Aircraft Design at College of Aeronautics of Cranfield University (UK). Sergio Chiesa has also been external examiner of several PhD Degrees at College of Aeronautics of Cranfield University (UK). Sergio Chiesa had been Head of the Department of Aeronautics and Space Engineering at Politecnico di Torino from 1992 to 1999. In 1995, he actively worked at the design and then management of undergraduate three-year course in Aerospace Engineering, named Corso di Diploma Universitario. Sergio Chiesa had been Head of Council of Education in Aerospace Engineering at Politecnico di Torino from 2000 to 2003, particularly for the courses dealing with systems engineering and design. Sergio Chiesa has been working at educational and research programs with aerospace and automotive and systems industries, as well as with military institutions, such as High Studies for Defence Center, CASD. He has also been the lecturer of the undergraduate course “Methods and Models for Logistics” within the Master of Science in Strategic Sciences for the education of Officers of Engineers Corp of Italian Army. Sergio Chiesa has worked at and managed other educational initiatives, such as the post-graduate master course in Aerospace and avionics Systems Engineering, in close cooperation with Alenia Aeronautica SpA and Thales Alenia Space Italia. Sergio Chiesa is member of the Scientific Board of the postgraduate master program in Reliability and Maintenance at Politecnico di Torino (COREP, i.e. the body of Politecnico devoted to Permanent Education). Sergio Chiesa has collaborated as external consultant with several industries (such as FiatAVIO and Piaggio Aeroindustries) to evaluate research proposals made by the same industries to the Italian Government. Sergio Chiesa has carried out several assessments in the aeronautical field, at the request of the Legal Authority, and, in some cases, as expert witness. Sergio Chiesa had been member of the Directorate Board of North Italy division of Society of Logistics Engineers (SOLE) for a few years in the 1980s and 1990s. He has been the President of the division in Turin of the National Association for the Automation (ANIPLA) since April 2004 and was President of the division in Turin of the Italian Association of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIDAA) and member of the National Committee of the same association; at present, Sergio Chiesa is still working in both Associations as Past President. To engineer and put on the market the products designed and developed at Politecnico di Torino, Sergio Chiesa together with a group of young collaborators at Poltecnico di Torino and senior engineers previously working in aerospace industries started in 2007 the academic spin-off SPAIC srl. Since 2012, Sergio Chiesa has been selected as “Referente” (Responsible) of AeroSpace Engineering Courses of Politecnico di Torino. As to the research activities, at the moment, he is working on several research programs as Leader of ASSET-AeroSpace Systems Engineering Team (comprehensive of some young researchers and PhD students), and he teaches the two courses of “Aerospace Systems” and “Integrated Aerospace Systems Design”; in particular, the latter course is completely based on team working activities aimed to preliminary definitions, for different themes assigned, of Aircraft Concept and relative on board Systems Configuration.

Marco Fioriti was born in Turin in 1980. He got his master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering in 2006 at Politecnico di Torino on “Conceptual Design of UCAV (Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle) with jet engine”. He worked for nine months as a Researcher at the Aerospace System Engineering research group of Politecnico di Torino on a design, integration study and installation, on a general aviation aircraft, of a green and innovative ECS (Environmental Conditioning System) (research call of Piedmont Region for year 2006). In the years 2007, 2008 and 2009, within the same research group, he has attended the PhD courses at Politecnico di Torino. He got his PhD in Aerospace Engineering at Politecnico di Torino in 2010 on “Innovative solutions for light, very light and unmanned aircraft. Preliminary design and Life Cycle Cost estimation”. He has been working as researcher on aeronautic system design at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Politecnico di Torino since January 2010. He has participated as system engineer skilled in RAMS (reliability, availability, maintainability and safety) and LCC (life cycle cost) disciplines in the following research program: (2006) Assessment of the behavior under real operating conditions of the ecological transcritical cycle air conditioning system installed on aircraft, research program funded by Piedmont Region, call of 2004; (2007-2009) Innovative Ultra-Light Aircraft: conceptual design of advanced ULM, research program funded by Piedmont Region, call of 2004; (2008-2010) Systems for UAV advanced Alternative Energy (SAvE), research program funded by Piedmont Region, call of 2006; (2010-2011) and (2012-2013) Advanced Land Monitoring System (SMAT), logistic and cost estimation studies for UAV based monitoring system, research program funded by Piedmont Region; (2011-2012) and (2013-2014) JTI – Clean Sky (SAGE Sustainable and Green Engine), LCC and CBA analysis for new generation regional aircraft with anti-noise and anti-vibration system for open-rotor engine integration, research program funded by C.E.; He is the co-author of 22 scientific publications, including a monograph and three contributions to a book. Fioriti has considerable experience in aircraft design since the research group, in which he works, has for many years operated in this subject and since he has carried out his PhD and further research activities in the Preliminary Design Office of Alenia Aermacchi S.p.A (Turin facility). Marco Fioriti also acquired considerable experience of design, handling quality and performance of ultralight aircraft since having obtained the pilot’s licence for this aircraft category.

Roberta Fusaro was born in Chivasso (Turin) in 1989. In 2011, she got her bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering in Politecnico di Torino, and in 2013, in the same university, she received her master’s degree with a thesis on “Hybrid Propulsion in Aeronautics”. Since January 2014, she has been an Aerospace Engineering PhD Student with a research program focused on “Comparative analysis of new configurations of aircraft aimed to competitiveness, environmental compatibility and safety”. Within this research program, she has the opportunity of keeping on studying hybrid solution and focusing on the design of innovative extreme configurations such as trans-atmospheric airplanes led by Professor Chiesa. Since October 2013, she has collaborated with the AeroSpace System Engineering Team (ASSET), a research group of the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department of Politecnico di Torino. This gave her the opportunity of having an active role in some projects, such as: Systems and Technologies for Space Exploration (STEPS) a regional project funded by Regione Piemonte, now at its second phase. This work has been carried out in collaboration with Thales Alenia Space (Turin); Sistema di Monitoraggio Avanzato del Territorio (SMAT), that is another project funded by Regione Piemonte that aims to create an integrated monitoring system exploiting the UAS capabilities. This project is at its second phase and is developed in collaboration with Alenia Aermacchi (Turin), a Finmeccanica Company; currently, she is studying in-depth the possible aeronautic applications of hybrid propulsion, with the possibility of taking part to an under-development Italian project called TIVANO (Tecnologie Innovative per Velivoli di Aviazione Generale di Nuova Generazione), which is mainly focused on the design of a new unmanned hybrid aircraft. These research activities gave Roberta the opportunity of increasing her knowledge on different fields of the Aerospace Engineering and allowed her to participate to some Italian and International Congresses. In particular, in April 2014, she took part in the Pegasus Student Conference in Prague, presenting her master thesis work within a European context.