TU Delft Faculty of Aerospace Engineering

The Faculty of Aerospace Engineering of the Delft University of Technology as seen from the sky.

The Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands is the merger of two interrelated disciplines, aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Aeronautical engineering works specifically with aircraft or aeronautics. Astronautical engineering works specifically with spacecraft or astronautics. At the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, both of the fields are directly addressed along with expansion into fields such as wind energy.

Description

The Faculty is one of the largest of the eight faculties at TU Delft and one of the largest faculties devoted entirely to aerospace engineering in northern Europe. It is the only institute carrying out research and education directly related to aerospace engineering in the Netherlands. Through the years, the Faculty has responded to the increasing demands of the aerospace industry by further expanding its facilities and laboratories. Today the Faculty has a student body of approximately 2300 undergraduates and graduates, 237 members of academic staff and 181 PhD students.^[1] Around 34% of the student population is from outside the Netherlands.
The TU Delft scored 15th in the world in the 2013 "Engineering and Technology" QS World University Rankings. In 2012 the TU Delft reached the 33rd place in the "Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering" category of the QS World University Rankings. In 2013 this category got extended to "Mechanical, Aeronautical & Manufacturing Engineering" and the TU Delft jumped to the 18th position worldwide (6th place in Europe).^[2]

Research

Current areas of research include novel aerospace materials, Particle Image Velocimetry, CubeSat, Airborne Wind Energy and several others. Currently ten research chairs are grouped under four major departments:^[3]

• Aerodynamics, Wind Energy, Flight Performance and Propulsion (AWEP)
• Control and Operations (C&O)
• Aerospace Structures and Materials (ASM)
• Space Engineering (SpE)

Facilities

Extensive laboratory and testing facilities are used in research and teaching. The facilities include supersonic, hypersonic and subsonic wind-tunnels, a high-sensitivity navigation simulator, and a materials testing laboratory. These facilities make it possible to conduct experiments in man-machine factors, flight control, structures and materials, aerodynamics, simulation, motion and navigation. The faculty owns and makes use of a Cessna Citation jet aeroplane which is a unique flying laboratory. The Citation is used in research as well as in education. It's modular interior enables the possibility to change quickly between research missions and educational flights with students. The flight simulator Simona is one of the most impressive facilities at the faculty. It can be programmed to simulate any known aircraft, but also to mimic characteristics of a new design. The unique light design allows extremely realistic motion. The simulator is used for research, but is also the subject of some M.Sc. thesis projects.^[4]

National and international cooperation

The Faculty plays a significant role in national organisations such as the National Aerospace Laboratory, the Netherlands Agency for Aerospace Programmes and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research. Collaborations with numerous international and multinational industries through research groups abroad as well as in the Netherlands ensure that the Faculty remains at the forefront of the latest developments in the aerospace industry.The Faculty is a member of PEGASUS, the European network of prestigious aerospace universities. It also participates in exchanges of students and lecturers through the SOCRATES/ERASMUS programmes and agreements between several other partner universities. The faculty plays a major role in the IDEA League (TU Delft, ETH Zurich, RWTH Aachen, Chalmers institutes and universities).^[5]

References