On February 2nd 2017, Latecoere’s Program Manager R&T Renaud OTHOMENE presented our electric passenger doors for airplanes, the Next Generation Equipped Door (NexGED). Here’s a summary of his presentation.
Following the successful European conference held in Toulouse in February 2015, the organisers of MEA2017 invited industry and research representatives to contribute to this new edition in Bordeaux. The goal was to share ideas, lessons learnt and solutions relating to technological developments as well as future concepts associated to electrical aircraft. On February 2nd 2017, Latecoere’s Program Manager R&T Renaud OTHOMENE presented our electric passenger doors for airplanes, the Next Generation Equipped Door (NexGED). Here’s a summary of his presentation.
Passenger doors of commercial airplanes are subject to two drastic antagonists’ set of requirements that lead the system’s design: opening of a door in flight must be extremely improbable, while a high capacity to open the door automatically and rapidly after a crash must be maintained. Major aircraft accidents in the 70’s and 80’s have led to important evolutions of certification requirements. As a result, current conventional mechanical doors became more and more complex, increasing significantly their weight and cost.
A project of research has been launched in 2011, to evaluate the benefits of performing functions with electrical technologies instead of mechanical. Such an electrical door performs all the functions and performances of a current mechanical door and permits to incorporate easily new features that improve importantly safety, dispatch reliability, and daily operations.
A system engineering approach has been used. Requirements, objectives, customer needs, and lessons learned have been captured, completed by a functional analysis. This permitted to elaborate a specification of an electrical door system by: 24 service functions, 4 operating modes, and about 300 requirements.
The use of electrical technologies has permitted to extend the benefits to additional functionalities for comfort, safety, and dispatch reliability. Such a door architecture represents a major technological breakthrough in the current doors features. Several ways of improvement in weight and costs have been identified, which could permit to obtain a competitive product regarding to current conventional mechanical doors.
The investigations of an electrical passenger door took place through the R&T project NexGED (Next Generation Equipped Door); supported by DGAC the French Civil Aviation Authority attached to the French Ministry of Environment Energy and Sea, and by DGA the French Government Defense Procurement and Technology Agency attached to the French Ministry of Defense. LATECOERE thanks its partners on this project: HUTCHINSON Aerospace, LISI Aerospace, SKF Aerospace, ZODIAC Aerospace, and UTC Aerospace System.
