Florian Siebert

I am an aerospace engineer with special background in aircraft aerodynamics and fluid mechanics. I investigate novel technologies for active load control, which aim to reduce structural wing mass and therefore fuel consumption of future aircraft.

The technologies I investigate are based on fluidic actuators - such as small jets on the wing surface – to reduce the forces on the wing during gust encounters and maneuver flight. The goal of my research is to combine these fluidic actuators with passive structural concepts (e.g. a wing with non-linear stiffness) to create a load alleviation system that is more powerful than just the active or passive approaches alone.

As a glider pilot for many years, I am particularly fascinated by the symbiosis between an aerodynamically efficient wing and the dynamics of a smart structural design. Exploiting this combination and the mutual interactions between aerodynamics and structural mechanics to design a more sustainable aircraft is what inspires my research.

If the loads on the aircraft structure can be reduced to a larger extend than currently possible, the wing structure can be built in a lighter way, which reduces the overall aircraft weight significantly. A lighter aircraft in turn needs much less energy for its mission. This directly reduces the CO₂ emissions per passenger kilometer and additionally serves as an enabler for novel drive systems (e.g. fuel cells) that require more energy efficient airframes.

The challenges we face in designing more sustainable aircraft must be targeted with multidisciplinary approaches to exploit synergies between the disciplines and find solutions with optimal trade-offs between the disciplines. This requires mixed teams with researchers from different disciplines, in which everyone contributes with special knowledge and a certain perspective on the research problem. This maximizes the understanding of the problem and the quality of the scientific answer to it.