Aircraft Design Trends in 2012

Aircraft Design Trends in 2012

Indeed, this is a good year to go into the aerospace engineering and design career path for a number of reasons. For instance, new materials have been inroduced and there is extreme pressure and bias towards creating more fuel-efficient and higher performance aircraft. Also, we are entering an era where we actually have the technology now to build flying cars. Everything is about to change, so things are getting pretty interesting, and aerospace engineers should be excited about this. Okay so, let's talk about this for second, as there are four categories I'd like to address.

New Materials

New materials such as Carbon Nanotubes, Graphene Coatings, and some of the new carbon composites being used will change everything. We will make aircraft more efficient, lighter, and able to do incredible things like shape shift. Hypersonic space flight, private space flight, and ultra efficient airliners are on their way. Speaking of ultra efficient airliners I'd like to talk about that as well.

Cost of Fuel and More Efficient Aircraft

Fuel costs are increasing, and there is a big need to use less fuel, and therefore put out less CO2 emissions. In Europe, the EU has new carbon credits for airliners, this means that companies with older airliners will have to switch to new more efficient planes. One way to satisfy this is for airlines to purchase aircraft that use more carbon composite components. Also, many of the new jet engines are not only more efficient, putting out more thrust using less fuel, but they also decrease emissions with more efficient burn than ever before.

Challenges With Bringing New Prototypes to Market

There are some challenges that aircraft designers will have to deal with. Only the very best designs will ever get built because the cost of prototype development and testing is astronomical, not to mention the liability to do so. That means even though future aircraft designs are proliferating, many of those will never get off the drawing board. Meanwhile there are plenty of other aircraft that has never left the drawing board from the past, that may become more viable in the future do the new materials.

Lack of New Aerospace Engineers, and Shortages in the Industry

Lastly, one of the biggest trends in aircraft design in 2012 is the reality that many of the aerospace engineers and designers are now retiring, and therefore they may not be around to design the aircraft of the future, even though they have all the know-how and knowledge to do so. Some of these top aerospace designers will probably still work in a consulting fashion, but they will most likely not be there with all their worldly experience to help us boldly go.

Indeed it is my sincere hope that you will please consider all this and think on it, and perhaps if you have new trends that you'd like to share with me, I would like you to send me an e-mail. If you'd like to stay up on all the upcoming trends, you should probably subscribe to my articles.