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Interview

TsAGI: a one-hundred year aviation journey
How to manufacture airplanes, when the First World War had barely ended and the Russian Civil War was beginning to flare up, and when the future of the country was clouded over with the smell of war? Did an incipient Soviet state need aviation? The order to build up the Central AeroHydrodynamic Institute, signed exactly a century ago on December 1, 1918, was a “yes.”
Hypersonic travel for passengers
The “Jet Age” — this is often a reference to the time we live in. The phrase challenges us, especially specialists in the aviation community. Today when we speak of passenger aircraft, it is difficult to imagine an aircraft flying at speeds of ... 7 000-8 000 km/h! Currently, however, scientists from the European Union, Russia and Australia are working on this very task.
"TsAGI is a real brand; we are well known internationally"
On April 1, 2017, the 25th anniversary of the Department of Foreign Economic Activities of TsAGI (DFEA) was celebrated. Created at the dawn of the new state and new economic realities, the Department managed to develop the right strategy, get support from foreign partners and build a solid reputation for TsAGI in the international market. Sofya Bluger, Head of TsAGI’s Department of Foreign Economic Activities told us about the experience accumulated by DFEA in 25 years, what in fact is meant by the letter “E” in its name, what is the favourite occupation of the DFEA’s team outside TsAGI and many other things.
By trial and error...
At the creation of aerodynamic models and their components, i.e., compressor vanes of gas turbine engines, the final stage of work determines the success of the whole process. The issue is the finish milling by means of a modern high precision CNC machining center, during which vibration of the parts may occur. Such adverse events are caused by impact of a milling cutter and may “ruin” a vane in a literal sense. At TsAGI, we found the solution to this issue. Gleb Gubanov, a young specialist of the Institute research and production complex, tells us about this solution.
Flight safety: a new step towards problem solving
For the first time in Russia, the scientists of the Central AeroHydrodynamic Institute named after professor N.E. Zhukovsky, TsAGI, (together with colleagues from the Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry named after N.S. Kurnakov of the Russian Academy of Sciences) are carrying out projects to create and study a shock-sensitive detector polymer coating for aircraft structures. Why it is so unique and how it can provide increase in flight safety and reduce the maintenance time for aircraft — these are the questions we discussed with Svetlana Smotrova, the Head of the Research Laboratory of the Structural Testing and Monitoring Promising Methods.
Fan as a means of transportation
Air-conditioning and life-support systems, shafts and tunnels ventilation, cooling of propulsion units of land and air transport vehicles, power engineering and petrochemistry — this is only an incomplete list of applications of fans. And within lifting and propulsion systems of drones, hovercraft and wing-in-ground effect aircraft, they can provide cargo transportation, monitoring of weather conditions, and rescue operations. Concepts of such vehicles are designed by TsAGI scientists.

The Head of the Department of Subsonic Internal Aerodynamics of Aviation and Industrial Systems of the Division of Hydrodynamics and Industrial Aerodynamics of TsAGI Viktor Mitrofovich speaks about the work in the field of fan-type vertical take-off and landing drones.
Where are ‘supermodels’ born?
This article isn’t about ladies, as you may have thought, but model aircraft! Particularly those which can confidently be called ‘supermodels.’ Read this article to find out why we call them this and who in TsAGI creates them.

Each newly designed aircraft must pass spin tests and be checked for other dangerous flight modes. Due to the high risk of failure, creation of such conditions during a flight experiment is a challenging task. This is exactly why scientists at TsAGI use dynamically scaled models (DSMs) in their research.
Without any noise and delay
We have already written several times about a new generation airliner — a supersonic business jet (SBJ), which is being developed by TsAGI’s scientists. The specialists of the Institute work on its design, study its aerodynamic characteristics, and work on providing high supersonic flight speeds. But the question of compliance with current and prospective environmental requirements on the noise level is still open. This problem is actively studied in the Russian Center of Aeronautical Science; and the seminar of the Academic Council of TsAGI is also dedicated to this problem. We met with Viktor Kopyev, the Head of the Acoustic Department, an expert of the Central AeroHydrodynamic Institute in the field of aeroacoustics, and talked with him about the future research on the prospective airplane’s development.
Touchstone for the Future
Thinking ahead, the accumulation of knowledge for a new breakthrough in the creation of the next generation of aircraft is an important aspect of the efforts among TsAGI scientists. One of the prime examples of such efforts is the testing of a reference model of a typical transport-class aircraft wing, the first phase of which was recently completed at the Institute. We met Petr Karkle, an expert in the field of aeroelasticity from TsAGI, to discuss how the experiments of today can help to get prospective ideas off the ground.

Mr. Karkle, please tell us more about the reference model: why is it called so and what is so special about it?

The model is called reference because it has been designed and manufactured in full compliance with the specifications of a typical full-scale aircraft wing. By doing so, we intend to narrow down the diversity of results and measurements.
Moscow to Vladivostok in Three Hours?
Our life is a constant journey from point A to point B, and the time we spend on it depends on the speed of travel. One hundred thrirty km/h is the maximum permissible speed on highways; the high-speed train Sapsan travels at 250 km per hour; and a civil subsonic aircraft, being the fastest passenger transportation mode available today, flies at no more than 900 km per hour on average.

Is it fast enough? For example, the distance from Moscow to Vladivostok is about 7000 kilometers. It is easy to calculate that even if travelling by air, the travel time will exceed 8 hours! However, is this acceptable in the context of the pace of modern life, where every minute counts?

Today, TsAGI is actively exploring the possibility of creating a new-generation supersonic business/passenger aircraft (SBA/SPA). Of course, this concept is already familiar to the world aviation community.