The growth shown by the aviation industry has given significant economic benefits, but also causes disturbance to communities living near airports, including annoyance and potential health problems due to the high aviation-induced noise levels. Therefore, regulations are implemented by imposing limits on the yearly cumulative noise levels at specific locations around airports. This requires understanding and prediction of the varying aircraft noise levels. This is traditionally achieved by using so-called best-practice or regulatory models, such as the Dutch aircraft noise model, which require low computational costs and limited model inputs. This way of noise monitoring comes with significant model approximations and hence potential deviations of the model predictions from the actual noise levels. The limitations of this current approach has given rise to distrust in communities near airports. Hence, the models need to be validated against real measurements, for which use is made of the stations from the Noise Monitoring System (NOMOS) around Schiphol Airport. In this contribution, we analyzed the time series of the yearly averaged L_den measured at 35 NOMOS stations for the period from 2006 to 2022. A distinction is made between noise from aircraft and that due to other noise sources. We observe a decreasing trend of 0.52 ± 0.04 dB(A)/year in L_den for the investigated time period. One of the objectives is to determine how the measured L_den can be assigned to the various aircraft types in the fleet at Schiphol. This is performed by an L_den time series analysis of the averaged time series over all stations, combined with changes in the fleet composition. The results from the unconstrained least squares (LS) and non-negative least squares (NNLS) methods are presented and compared. Based on the obtained model for 2006-2020, predictions are performed for 2021 and 2022.

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The impressive growth of the aviation industry and the number of flights entail several environmental repercussions, such as increased aircraft noise emissions. With the worrying number of complaints from the communities around airports comes also the distrust in numerical models used for aircraft noise prediction. In this study, we compare the ‘Dutch aircraft noise model’ predictions to measured values from the NOise MOnitoring System (NOMOS) around Amsterdam Airport Schiphol between 2012 and 2018. While the model underestimates aircraft noise in 2012, the model prediction improved throughout the years. We observe a decreasing trend of measured aircraft-related L_den values of 0.6dB(A)/year (a total of 3.6dB(A) over the investigation period), although the total number of flight movements increased during the observation time. We propose that a change in fleet mix, as well as the implementation of Noise Abatement Procedures at Schiphol Airport, fuelled this trend.

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The Faculty of Aerospace Engineering is one of eight faculties at Delft University of Technology. It is one of the most comprehensive academic and innovation communities worldwide focusing on aerospace engineering. Its 120 professors and 70 researchers are mentoring and teaching around 2,800 BSc/MSc students and more than 350 PhD candidates while working in all aerospace disciplines. It’s a powerhouse in aerospace education, research, and innovation, within the top 10 in the world. Our priority themes? Sustainable aerospace, digital transformation, including Artificial Intelligence, bio-inspired engineering and smart instruments and systems. Here’s our story.@en

Aviation is an important contributor to the global economy, satisfying society’s mobility needs. It contributes to climate change through CO₂ and non-CO₂ effects, including contrail-cirrus and ozone formation. There is currently significant interest in policies, regulations and research aiming to reduce aviation’s climate impact. Here we model the effect of these measures on global warming and perform a bottom-up analysis of potential technical improvements, challenging the assumptions of the targets for the sector with a number of scenarios up to 2100. We show that although the emissions targets for aviation are in line with the overall goals of the Paris Agreement, there is a high likelihood that the climate impact of aviation will not meet these goals. Our assessment includes feasible technological advancements and the availability of sustainable aviation fuels. This conclusion is robust for several COVID-19 recovery scenarios, including changes in travel behaviour.

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This year, 2020, the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands celebrates its 80th birthday. This paper describes the history of the department since its founding in early 1940, just before the start of World War II in the Netherlands, until present day. The paper will highlight how its research and education developed within the socio-economic context of the Netherlands and the developments in aerospace over the past 80 years.@en

The Design/Synthesis Exercise (DSE) is the capstone project for the Bachelor of Science program at TU Delft, Faculty of Aerospace Engineering. This paper highlights its conceptual foundations, as well as the project management and systems engineering aspects involved throughout the 10-week full-time exercise. Two DSE projects – one aircraft-related, one spacecraft-related – are presented to give insight into typical design processes and associated outcomes observed in DSE projects.@en

This year, 2020, the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands celebrates its 80th birthday. This paper describes the history of the department since its founding in early 1940, just before the start of World War II in the Netherlands, until present day. The paper will highlight how its research and education developed within the socio-economic context of the Netherlands and the developments in aerospace over the past 80 years.@en

This paper presents two major elements of a course redesign with the aim to strengthen the connection between engineering design and engineering analysis. The course, Aircraft Structural Design and Analysis, had previously been delivered with a heavy focus on mathematical analysis and solving complex problems. It was observed, however, that in later design projects within the curriculum, students were unable to apply these skills in a less constrained design context. To combat this, two-course elements were introduced. The first element was a design tutorial session that ran in parallel with the course and interfaced with real design activities being carried out within the AeroDelft Dream Team at Delft University of Technology. This session attempted to have students apply the skills they had learned in class to a less constrained design problem with more freedom than traditional practice problems, focusing on design thinking rather than reproducing an expected answer. The second element was a design-based final exam, where all of the questions within the exam were interconnected by a single design context. The first iteration of these design elements, including lessons learned and analysis of their impact on student success, will be presented within this paper.

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The paper presents a possible roadmap for the definition of a European quality label for aerospace related higher education degrees. The proposal is the result of a two-years long Horizon 2020 project that has involved a great portion of the European stakeholders in aerospace: Universities, research centres, industries (both small and large) networks, associations and accreditation agencies. The core concept established is that it is possible to establish a sector-specific, content based, quality system, that can complement the existing national or European accreditation systems, providing added value to the internal and/or external quality assurance processes that are in place in most EU countries. The tools and processes proposed are sufficiently simple to be manageable by Universities in addition to their national accreditation processes or as stand-alone assessment. The main goal of the proposed process is the evaluation of the quality of the aerospace curricula in the European context, whereas the accreditation of the programme can be seen as an optional extension of the process, subject to further national regulations. The process is proposed in view of the awarding of a sector-specific, content based, quality label, to be issued by an appropriate legally recognized and qualified institution. 8 field tests with volunteering universities throughout Europe have been performed. They experienced the method as very practical and to the point.

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The paper presents a possible roadmap for the definition of a European quality label for aerospace related higher education degrees. The proposal is the result of a two-years long Horizon 2020 project that has involved a great portion of the European stakeholders in aerospace: Universities, research centres, industries (both small and large) networks, associations and accreditation agencies. The core concept established is that it is possible to establish a sector-specific, content based, quality system, that can complement the existing national or European accreditation systems, providing added value to the internal and/or external quality assurance processes that are in place in most EU countries. The tools and processes proposed are sufficiently simple to be manageable by Universities in addition to their national accreditation processes or as stand-alone assessment. The main goal of the proposed process is the evaluation of the quality of the aerospace curricula in the European context, whereas the accreditation of the programme can be seen as an optional extension of the process, subject to further national regulations. The process is proposed in view of the awarding of a sector-specific, content based, quality label, to be issued by an appropriate legally recognized and qualified institution. 8 field tests with volunteering universities throughout Europe have been performed. They experienced the method as very practical and to the point.@en

Blended education, or “flipping the classroom” is rapidly becoming a mainstream form of teaching within universities. Within Engineering Education, it is popular as it allows more time in-class to focus on hands on activities such as demonstrations and solving complex problems. This paper discusses the effort conducted to restructure, according to the blended learning principles, the “Propulsion and Power” course of the Aerospace Engineering Bachelor degree programme at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). The redesigned course was supported by a dedicated online & blended education unit within the university, and is characterized by a very peculiar structure due to the different approach chosen by the two involved lecturers. The first lecturer decided to “pull” the students, by proposing a number of additional videos available in the World Wide Web as a support and complement to the material taught in class. Conversely, the second lecturer opted for a “push” approach, selfrecording theory videos to be watched by the students at home and devoting the in-class hours to exercises and applications of the theory. This format resulted in a clear improvement of the average exam grades and pass rates. The student feedback showed enthusiasm about the new blended course, with only a very small minority still preferring the previous, more traditional approach. Although there seems to be a slight preference of students towards the “push” strategy, the “pull” approach has also been widely appreciated. However, the objective to reattract students to the contact hours in class was only partially achieved, since just a slight improvement in the number of attending students was observed. This paper clearly shows that the efforts to implement a blended teaching strategy has great benefits for both students and staff alike. Keywords: @en