Guest editorial

Citation

Goraj, Z.J. and Pantelakis, S. (2020), "Guest editorial", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 92 No. 9, pp. 1317-1318. https://doi.org/10.1108/AEAT-05-2020-0091

Special issue after 9th EASN International Conference on Innovation in Aviation and Space

Dear reader

This special issue of the Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology Journal is dedicated to the 9th EASN International Conference on Innovation in Aviation and Space and contains selected papers for works presented in the Conference. The event was co-organized by the EASN Association, the University of Patras and the National Technical University of Athens. The Conference was held in Athens, Greece between the 3rd and 6th of September 2019.

The main objective of the 9th EASN International Conference was to serve as a forum for dissemination of results for Aviation and Space related research projects and exchange of information about state‐of‐the art research and development activities in Aeronautics, Air Transport and Space. New upstream ideas presented during the Conference are expected to contribute to further scientific advances and the development of new technologies. The event’s agenda included nine Keynote Lectures given by distinguished personalities of the European Aviation and Space sector, who updated the delegates on the European priorities with respect to the medium and long‐term European Research and Innovation challenges. Moreover, industrial research trends and priorities were presented and discussed. In this context, we would like to cordially thank the invited speakers and more specifically:

• Dr Michael Kyriakopoulos, European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation Aviation

• Mr Andrea Gentili, European Commission, Deputy Head of Unit – Low Emissions Future Industries

• Mr Ron Van Manen, Clean Sky JU, Head of Strategic Development

• Mr Charalampos Papaspyros, Hellenic Aerospace Industry (HAI), Vice President of the BoD

• Mr Yann Barbaux, AIRBUS SAS, Senior-Vice President and AEROSPACE VALLEY Cluster, Executive Chairman

• Mr Jean‐Marc Astorg, Centre National d' Etudes Spatiales (CNES), Head of Launch Vehicles Directorate

• Dr Jean‐Francois Brouckaert, Clean Sky, Chief Scientific Officer

• Prof Andreas Strohmayer, EASN, Chairman of the BoD

• Dr Giuseppe G. Daquino, European Defence Agency (EDA), Project Officer Materials and Structures Technologies

The Conference programme included 360 technical presentations distributed in approximately 70 sessions. Furthermore, 40 HORIZON 2020 projects have disseminated their most recent research results as well as the future trends on the respective technological fields.

The event has been recorded as the largest and most comprehensive gathering of the Association so far, as in total more than 450 participants joined the 9th EASN International Conference. This evolutionary route of EASN gatherings justifies EASN’s long-term goal, which is to build up an open, unique European platform to structure, support and upgrade the research activities of European universities dealing with aeronautics, as well as to facilitate them to respond to their key role within the European aeronautical research community in incubating new knowledge and breakthrough technologies. The first EASN workshop was organized in Paris (2010), the second one in Torino (2011), and in the following years, successive conferences were held in Prague, Milan, Aachen, Manchester, Porto, Warsaw, Glasgow and finally, leading to a fruitful Conference in Athens, as indicated in Figure 1 below.

From the numerous contributions to the 9th EASN Conference, a limited number of papers were accepted for publication in the special issue of the Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology Journal following peer review. These papers are related to the following topics:

• “Aerodynamics and Flight Dynamics” (4 papers);

• “Air Traffic Management and states of emergency” (4 papers);

• “Trimming, Stability and Control” (2 papers);

• “Sensors, on-board equipment” (2 papers); and

• “Polymers, aerospace materials” (1 paper).

Moreover, further papers presented during 9th EASN Conference were submitted to other scientific journals and some of them were accepted for being published, as well.

The quality of the issue is primarily based on the contributions of all authors, to whom we are grateful for their valuable work.

The Editors of this Special Issue would like to thank the authors for their high-quality contributions and for making this Special Issue manageable. Further, we would like to express our appreciation to the reviewers for their evaluation and suggestions. Finally, thanks are due to Dr Askin T. Isikveren, the Editor-in-Chief of the Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology Journal, for his support in preparing this special issue.

We hope you will find the contents of the special issue interesting and worth reading.

Figures

Figure 1

Locations of the EASN Conferences over the years

Prof Zdobyslaw Goraj	Prof Spiros Pantelakis
Guest Editor	EASN Honorary President