ATTILA

Advanced Testbed for Tiltrotor Aero elastics

The ATTILA project is aimed at the design, manufacture and testing of an advanced testbed for aeroelastic wind tunnel testing of tiltrotor aircraft. The testbed will consist of a suitably instrumented aero elastically scaled cantilevered half-wing with powered nacelle-proprotor system representative of the full-scale NGCTR-TD design. Advanced fibre optic sensor and contactless rotating power and data transfer techniques will be used. The design process, coupled with test iterations, is supported by detailed structural and aeroelastic simulations using a range of complementary codes.

 The primary role of PhotonFirst in the ATTILA project is to be a technology and solution provider for fibre optic sensing equipment and material. Secondary role is contributing to sensor design, implementation and embedding techniques, test evaluations and demonstrator support, as well as road-mapping towards business case exploitation.