In 1936 Gianni Caproni, one of the biggest aircraft producers in Italy, bought one of the biggest engineering companies in Emilia Romagna, the Officine Meccaniche Reggiane, and started manufacturing and exporting some of the topmost fighters ever produced in Italy. Based on different archival sources this paper would like to shed light on why, despite a national technological obsolescence in the field a company, which focused on the production of railway material, was able to come up with the most technologically innovative fighters (the Re. 2000 and successive models) which soon conquered the Italian and foreign markets. The author would like to indicate the original characteristics which help explain its primacy: the unique features of the Reggiane, the role of the new owner, risk-taker and forward-looking entrepreneur Gianni Caproni and in particular the importance of the transmission of knowledge, which in those autarchic years and in this particular case was reached by attracting human capital from abroad. The general argumentation of the paper would like to show the importance of deeply excavating in the company’s history, managerial choices, risk-taking attitudes, and knowledge transfer in explaining an otherwise almost inexplicable international business success in a such a competitive sector. The approach is not purely descriptive: the paper analyses the facts and figures of the Officine Meccaniche Reggiane before and after the Caproni takeover, it evaluates the company’s innovative production strategy in the new field of aircraft production and offers new interpretations on its success story in this field.

A radical shift in technology is necessary to enable future air transport solutions. Sustainability targets for aeroengine manufacturing mean more than reducing CO2 and NOX. The future will open up possibilities and bring new challenges when introducing hybrid- and electrical propulsion technologies using new materials, technology solutions and new business models. This article reports on findings from a longitudinal study and many years of collaboration between researchers and industry experts, where a first-tier aeroengine manufacturer transforms their product development capabilities to enable sustainable product development. The article highlights some activities undertaken and identifies critical challenges and opportunities remaining for a manufacturer of next-generation aeroengine solutions. It is argued that the challenge for aeroengine manufacturers to develop new-generation propulsive technologies will require a systemic change in the undertaking of design and development. The opportunities of sustainable technologies are evident yet require: (1) means to tighter integrate business and technology development, (2) the ability to quantify and assess sustainability impacts of different concept solutions, and (3) means to utilise natural resources, alloys and materials for a circular and life-cycle optimised solution.

Radio telescopes are among the applications with the highest demands on a local oscillator (LO), which is used to receive and process the signals coming from the sky. Therefore the modules providing the required LO signal have traditionally been big and complicated. To overcome this disadvantage, we implement our own integrated frequency synthesizer inside a small LO module in this article. With this synthesizer we are able to achieve a jitter of only 50 fs integrated from 10 Hz to 2.5 GHz offset at a carrier frequency of 75 GHz. This is in part achieved by a very low in-band phase noise of −111.8 dBc at 10 kHz offset. The stabilizable frequency range is 62–88 GHz. Thus achieving promising results to fulfill this very demanding task with integrated frequency synthesizers in the future.

Sustainability considerations are traditionally difficult to trade-off with technical and business requirements in an early design phase. Hence, design teams need support to reflect early on in the process, on how sustainability may affect profitability and customer value fulfilment in the long term. The commoditisation of modelling and simulation techniques points to gamification and serious gaming as emerging approaches to raise awareness among the design team – as well as users and stakeholders – of the expected behaviour of a solution along its life cycle. The objective of this paper is to explore how serious games can be used to inform decision-makers about the value versus cost implications of being (or not being) ‘sustainability compliant’ when designing products and systems. The paper initially presents the findings from a descriptive study focused on the definition of ‘design support’ intended to raise sustainability awareness through serious gaming. It further describes the development, application and testing of one of such games for material selection in the aerospace industry.

Additive manufacturing (AM) has made long strides in the recent past and rapidly evolved into a promising alternative in specific applications. The aircraft industry is not an exception to this. The true just-intime production possibility is critical for the aircraft maintenance industries, though the lack of material freedom is a major hurdle. Several fire-retardant materials were investigated for AM in the aerospace context, but mainly for fused deposition modeling (FDM). The material consolidation constraints in FDM led to the expansion to the use of selective laser sintering (SLS) to some extent. Nevertheless, the material options are still limited, proprietary, and lack scientific insights into the material consolidation mechanics. Attempts are made in this paper to fill this gap, evaluating a new fire-retardant material for processing by SLS. Experiments conducted to ascertain the material, process, structure, and consolidation relationships indicated energy density levels 0.062–0.070 J/mm2 with laser power 13 W and scan speed varied slightly around 390 mm/s to give the best laser sintering and mechanical property results in polyetherimide powders.

The mitigation of CMAS (calcium–magnesium–aluminum–silicon oxide) infiltration is a major requirement for the stability of thermal barrier coatings. In this study, yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ)–Al2O3–SiC, YSZ–Al2O3–Ta2O5, and YSZ–Al2O3–Nb2O5 self-healing composites produced by uniaxially pressing powders were investigated as an alternative to YSZ. CMAS infiltration in these materials was tested at 1250 °C for 10 h. Comparing the depth of CMAS infiltration using scanning electron microscope (SEM) in tandem with electron-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), all self-healing materials were found to perform better than the reference materials. While standard YSZ shows massive CMAS infiltration, SEM micrographs and EDS maps revealed a 33-fold improvement in CMAS resistance for the YSZ–Al2O3–Nb2O5 system, which exhibited the best performance among the selected self-repairing materials. X-ray diffraction and high-resolution SEM micrographs taken 10 μm below the surface revealed that CMAS only infiltrated pores in the topmost region of the samples. Both YSZ–Al2O3–Ta2O5 and YSZ–Al2O3–Nb2O5 systems showed no signs of chemical reaction with CMAS.

Air plasma sprayed thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) are used extensively throughout the gas turbine industry for both power and propulsion. As these engines push to higher temperatures, concern for failure from the melt infiltration of ingested siliceous debris [commonly called calcium–magnesium–alumino-silicate (CMAS)] arises, especially in aeroengines. 7 wt% yttria-stabilized zirconia is particularly prone to melt infiltration and stiffening-induced premature failure. Novel TBC materials such as gadolinium zirconate have been introduced for their infiltration-inhibiting CMAS reactions. Past academic work has utilized ideal laboratory furnace environments to study these phenomena. In this work, the influence of TBC microstructure and chemistry on impinging molten CMAS injected via a burner rig is studied. An observational study of the impacted surfaces and location-specific cross-sectional analysis is reported. Results point toward the critical role of surface microstructure on the mobility and reactivity of the molten CMAS.

Environmental issues such as climate change are leading to sustainability challenges for the aerospace industry. New materials such as composites allow significant weight reduction, which leads to a lower fuel consumption. However, composites involve complex processes and there is a lack of knowledge on their social and environmental consequences. Through two cases based on real aero-engines components, this paper shows that the weight savings provided by composites reduce significantly the CO2 emissions during flight which compensates the environmental drawbacks from production and recycling.

Magneto polymer matrix composites (MPMC) is a new class of magnetic polymer materials which are being developed and under investigation as potential materials for tomorrow’s aircraft structures. It encompasses magnetic, particulate strengthening (dispersion strengthening) as well as fiber reinforcement/strengthening characteristics which are sought out to be utilized toward making efficient future aerospace composite materials. Various types of ferrites including barium, cobalt, iron, and strontium were explored for being used in making new composites. Here a comprehensive review of the synthesis, structure, properties, thermodynamics, surface chemistry, and phase transformations of individual ferrites and clusters of ferrites as fillers is presented. In particular a discussion about the rational control of the mechanical, physical, thermal, electrical, and magnetic properties of magneto polymer matrix composites through surface functionalization, modification, emulsification/compounding/blending, heat treatment (phase transformation and separation), and control of processing conditions (temperature, pressure and geometry of mold) is provided. These smart materials have a wide range of potential applications in medicine, drug delivery, bio imaging, bio marking, tissue engineering, electromagnetic interference (EMI) and electromagnetic force (EMF) shielding, and as competent materials for aerospace structural applications.

This article discusses three main points. First, ultrahigh-temperature materials offer a large return to the propulsion community and to the economy, but replacing Ni-based alloys is a very difficult problem for both technical and financial reasons. Second, the oxidation resistance of selected Mo-Si-B alloys and the prospects for combining this with useful structural properties are remarkable, given the nature of conventional Mo alloys; however, there are nagging issues associated with their low-temperature (∼700°C) behavior. Third, further advances in the processing of such materials, together with assessments of their affordability and reliability, are vital for achieving a successful engineering technology.