Home - Weibal Project

Acronym: WEIBAL
Call: H2020-CS2-CFP10-2019-01
Type of action: IA
(Implementation Action)
Duration: 30 months
(01/01/2020-31/03/2023)
Total Funding: 799.714,29 €

The vision of the EU HORIZON 2020 program is to bring breakthroughs, promising discoveries and great ideas from the lab to market. This will create and guarantee jobs. The aeronautical sector through the Clean Sky 2 Work Program aims to contribute to one of the main social challenges of ‘intelligent, ecological and integrated transport’ defined in Horizon 2020, allowing cutting-edge solutions to reduce the environmental impact of the sector and achieve the ACARE 2020 targets, facilitating the first steps towards the Flightpath 2050 targets that include 75% CO2 reduction and 90% NOx consumption, as well as 65% noise reduction.

The Clean Sky 2 program pursues the delivery of large-scale in-flight demonstrations of novel architectures and configurations, including advanced technologies demonstrated at the complete systems level, that would not otherwise be affordable to the private sector with manageable risk. In this sense, the competitiveness of European industry is promoted from an environmental and economic point of view.

The main objective of WEIBAL project is to develop a weight and balance measurement system for the analysis of the tiltrotor weight distribution, allowing the evaluation of the position of the Center of Gravity (CoG) in three-dimensional space.

Environmental, economic and social objectives for the EU

Reduce CO2 emissions

WEIBAL contributes to the development of a weight measurement system for tiltrotors aimed at improving the accuracy of weight and balance data. In addition to the contribution to the test of the architectures proposed for tiltrotors, a proper leveling of the aircraft is an element to reduce fuel consumption. The direct contribution is difficult to estimate at this time, as the project contribution is related to a better balance and orientation of the tiltrotor to reduce the drag force and CO2 emission.

Improve the competitiveness of the EU

WEIBAL contributes to the development of the proposed tiltrotor configuration, the reduction of development time to achieve a commercial European tiltrotor, and the secondary technologies developed in the project. Since certified tiltrotors are not currently available in the civil sector (whereas only one product is available in the military), WEIBAL will help the EU to achieve a leadership position. The contribution of the project results would drive a greater knowledge for the optimized design of tiltrotors, and the advanced knowledge for the development of weight and balance systems for aircraft (not yet available in the market, except for specific satellite systems).

Improve mobility

WEIBAL will help to demonstrate the proper configuration of the tiltrotor. The mobility characteristics of this configuration, such as: payload capacity, agility in vertical flight, including the ability to land on unprepared surfaces near obstacles and to load / unload rescue personnel and victims while in flight, long range , high cruising speed, low fuel consumption and emission of gases, low noise impact in the community, etc. It makes this type of aircraft configuration a good choice for improving operator productivity on short-haul trips.