About us
The Institute of Aircraft Design at the University of Stuttgart (USTUTT) is part of Germany’s largest faculty of Aerospace Engineering. It has more than 100 years of experience in aircraft design, flight testing, composite materials, and design and testing of aerospace, automotive and wind-energy structures.
In cooperation with a large number of industrial partners, the Institute of Aircraft Design (IFB) of USTUTT participates in different projects funded by the EU (CleanSky) and national ministries related to aircraft design, development and manufacturing. IFB is one of the distinguished facilities in the field of manned electric aircraft projects. Two of these research projects for manned aircraft with electric propulsion still serve as manned technology test platforms: the single-seat solar powered aircraft "icaré 2" and the initially battery electric "e-Genius" which offers two seats. Both aircraft are still in use.
In parallel to the aircraft research projects corresponding research activities focus on suitable energy systems. Until now two different serial hybrid-electric systems have been fully elaborated, built and tested.
Key assets for the project
USTUTT is the project coordinator. They are specialized in preliminary aircraft design and are able to predict flight performance, weight and aerodynamic parameters of conventional and unconventional aircraft designs. At USTUTT sensitivities in aircraft design can be determined by trade-off studies - optimal aircraft design can be found by the implementation of e.g. gradient-based optimization algorithms. A focus in teaching and scientific projects at USTUTT is the application of CAD software, which is used to visualize aircraft designs and to carry out feasibility studies and space allocation investigations.