‘Inferno’ wins German Aerospace Centre Design Challenge 2022
A team from the Aerospace Engineering study program at the University of Stuttgart has presented a concept for a hybrid firefighting aircraft, ‘Inferno’, which won this year’s Design Challenge from the German Aerospace Centre (DLR).
Firefighting aircrafts are filled up with water at an airport or at large lakes and take it over long distances to where the fire is, but since the propellers are designed for forward flight, a lot of space is needed for takeoff and landing and for water intake (scooping.)
Helicopters allow pilots to descend vertically over a small lake or even swimming pool to collect water, and can hover in the air to accurately drop extinguishing water over the source of the fire, but they are also slower and consume considerably more energy.
Stuttgart students Benjamin Knoblauch, Günay Can, Hannes Kahlo, Johannes Ritter, Nicolas Mandry, and Prishit Modi designed an aircraft with two aircraft propellers for forward flight and eight propellers for vertical flight.
This is possible due to the lightweight construction of components made of fibre composites and a hybrid-electric propulsion system comprising electric motors, a battery, and a gas turbine that can also be refuelled in the air. Because airborne firefighting is often dangerous for pilots, attention was also paid to cockpit ergonomics and support systems.
The operational concept includes 4–6 identical aircraft with different payload modules, where one or two additional aircrafts for passengers and cargo supply or evacuate people in distress.
The team was supervised by Professor Andreas Strohmayer and Johannes Schneider from the Institute of Aircraft Design (IFB) at the University of Stuttgart. Strohmayer said: “The students designed a realistic firefighting aircraft that has achieved excellent results in all the competition’s criteria.”
The young aircraft designers competed against five other teams to win the competition, and in September, they will present their design to an international audience of aviation engineers at the International Council of Aeronautical Science conference, and at the German Aerospace Congress (DLRK) in Dresden.
In August last year, EHang launched a new version of its 216 aerial autonomous vehicle specifically designed for tackling fires in high-rise buildings known as the EHang 216F at a launch ceremony in Yunfu, China. It can reach a maximum flight altitude of 600 meters, carrying up to 150 litres of firefighting foams and six fire extinguisher bombs on a single trip.
A couple of days later, the 216F was used by emergency departments for the first time as part of a rescue drill in China.
