It is an enormous honour for me to take over from Peter Bearman as Editor-in-Chief of the world's oldest aeronautics journal. Most of you will not know me and thus I'd like to give you a bit of background: I grew up in Bavaria and studied Aerospace Engineering at Stuttgart University. Under the German system it was common to work on the final research project (Diploma thesis) outside the University and I was lucky enough to find a suitable place in Cranfield. There, my supervisor was John Stollery, who led this journal as Editor-in-Chief for many years. After a PhD in hypersonic aerodynamics (also at Cranfield) I became a post-doctoral researcher at Tohoku University in Japan. 18 months later I returned to the UK to take up a lectureship in aerodynamics at the Engineering Department of Cambridge University where I am now the Professor of Aerodynamics, Head of the Fluids Group and Deputy Head of Department with responsibility for graduate education.

International air travel becomes more affordable over the years with the introduction of low-cost carriers (LCCs) in Asia Pacific. As a result, this region has seen an exponential growth in its air traffic movements. Asia Pacific has been recording faster air traffic growths, compared to regions such as Europe and North America. This is largely due to emerging markets and developing economies in Asia Pacific. This is especially seen in the demand and supply for LCCs in Southeast Asia. Changi Airport, being one of the major air traffic hubs in Asia, is facing overloaded traffic in the future due to this exponential growth. Although a new runway and new terminals are proposed and in the process of being built, the coming years could still bring a huge challenge to the airport, if its existing capacity is not maximised to cope with the increasing traffic demand. Hence, we studied the impacts of increasing LCC flights on the airport runway capacity. Different runway operational scenarios were simulated to investigate their advantages and disadvantages. It is found that the segregated parallel arrival-departure runway operation is beneficial. By simulating various operational scenarios with the projected increasing flight movements, it is found that a dedicated runway to medium-sized arrival aircraft may be more beneficial, as this would possibly enable it to have a higher runway capacity.

Propeller synchrophasing control is an active method to reduce the noise and vibration of turboprop aircraft without additional weight and power. Phase control accuracy has a great influence on the noise reduction effect of synchrophasing. An integrated power/speed/synchrophasing control strategy is proposed to improve the control precision. Speed/phase control transformation logic based on a multi-blade phase plane is adopted which can take both the rapidity of speed response and phase control precision into account, but there exists switching oscillation during the mode transform process. In order to suppress the phase fluctuation due to exterior disturbance, a slave-slave control scheme is provided to take place of a master-slave scheme. Simulation results based on an integrated turboprop engine/propeller real-time non-linear model show that speed/phase integration logic can improve the response rapidity of both the speed and phase. The precision of the control system is verified to be in acceptable range.

Following the B777 accident at Heathrow in 2008, the certification authorities required Boeing, Airbus, and Rolls-Royce to conduct icing analysis and tests of their Rolls-Royce Trent engined aircraft fuel systems. The experience and the test data gained from these activities were distilled and released by Airbus to the EASA ICAR project for research and analysis. This paper provided an overview of the Airbus ice accretion and release tests. Brief narratives on the test rigs, the test procedure and methodology were given and key findings from the ice release investigations were presented. The accreted ice thickness was non-uniform; however, it is found typically c. $\mathrm{2\;\mathrm{m}\mathrm{m}}$ thick. Analysis of the accreted ice collected from the rig tests showed the ice was very porous. The porosity is very much dependant on how the water was introduced and mixed in the icing test rigs. The standard Airbus method produced accreted ice of higher porosity compared to that produced by the injection method. The porosity of the accreted ice from Airbus icing investigations was found to be c. 0.90. The relationship of permeability with porosity was inferred from published data and models for freshly fallen snow in the atmosphere. Derived permeability $\mathrm{7.0\times 10^{-9}\;\mathrm{\mathrm{\mathrm{m}}^{\mathrm{2}}}}$ was then applied in the CFD analysis of pipe flow with a porous wall lining to determine the shear stress on the accreted ice. It showed that 25%, 50% and 75% of the accreted ice has interface shear strength of less than $\mathrm{15.3\;\mathrm{Pa}}$, $\mathrm{20.7\;\mathrm{Pa}}$ and $\mathrm{26.1\;\mathrm{Pa}}$, respectively.

In Japan, the working group for the Mars Exploration Aircraft continues to research and develop a Mars aircraft aiming to a future survey mission. To ensure the success of the flight mission, a self-localisation system with low-computational complexity is necessary. In the present research, a new self-localisation method is proposed using multispectral images. The algorithm is based on the simple mapping of image moment invariants and gradients calculated from several images at different wavelengths. The numerical simulations revealed the sufficient robustness of the proposed method to image noise. The estimation accuracy can be improved by increasing the number of the spectral images.

To investigate the control effect of the synthetic jet on the aerodynamic characteristic of rotors, a numerical simulation procedure for the rotor flowfield is established. First, a moving-embedded grid method and an unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) solver are established for predicting the complex flowfield of rotors. A velocity jet boundary condition over the jet actuator orifice is constructed, and a numerical method for simulating the active flow control on rotors is developed. Then, the effectiveness of the simulation method is validated by comparing the numerical results of jet control on NACA 0015 aerofoil with the experimental data. At last, the aerodynamic characteristic of rotors with synthetic jet actuators located on the suction surface of the blade in forward flight is calculated. The results indicate that the synthetic jet has the capability of improving the aerodynamic characteristic of rotors, especially in inhibiting the flow separation over the surface. In addition, the increase of the jet momentum coefficient and the jet angle can both enhance the lift coefficient in the retreating side. Compared with a single jet, jet arrays have better control effects on improving the aerodynamic characteristic of rotors in forward flight.

The primary objective of this research was to analyse the discrepancies in polymeric properties in Y12 aircraft tyres after 50 landings. Tensile strength and elongation test, abrasion test and hardness tests were carried out for the nose and main gear tyres after the completion of 50 landings. Surface morphologies of the tyre samples were observed using SEM. ISO specifications were followed for each experimental method during testing. There was a reduction in both median tensile strength and elongation at break in aircraft tyres after 50 landings but the reduction rate of both parameters were lower in Tyre 2 (nose wheel tyre) compared with Tyre 1 (left main wheel tyre) and Tyre 3 (right main wheel tyre). The highest percentage of mean volume loss was reported for Tyre 3 (3.88%). In addition, the least percentage of mean volume loss was obtained in Tyre 2 (2.98%). The percentage of hardness reduction was highest in Tyre 2 (6.9%). The surface roughness was induced to the tyre surface after completion of 50 landings.

High-precision response of the surrogate model is desired in the process of optimisation. An excessive number of sampling points will increase the cost of the calculation. The appropriate number of sampling points cannot only guarantee the accuracy of the surrogate model but also save the calculation cost. The purpose of this research is to demonstrate the eventuality of using an adaptive surrogate model for optimisation problems. The adaptive surrogate model is built on an adaptive sampling approach and an extended radial basis function (ERBF). The adaptive sampling is an approach that new sampling points are placed in the blank area and all the sampling points are uniformly distributed in the design region using Multi-Island GA. The precision of the ERBF surrogate model is checked using standard error measure to determine whether the surrogate model should be updated or not. This adaptive surrogate model is used to optimise a cruise missile head shape. Aerodynamic and stealthy performance of the cruise missile head shape are considered in this research. Different global objective function and different weight factor are used to research the aerodynamic and stealthy performance in this optimisation process. The results show that the drag is reduced with a slender head shape and the radar-cross section (RCS) value is reduced with a short head shape.