Enhancing the performance of civil aircraft wings is of paramount importance in today’s aerospace industry. Achieving high performance levels is reliant on high-fidelity performance prediction methods, and on effective risk mitigation in applying refinements to the overall design.

The aim of the EFT project is to significantly improve the performance assessment fidelity of transonic wings, while reducing uncertainty in the aircraft design process. This is achieved by targeting 3 main design areas:

1. Improving the estimation of CLmax uncertainty to ±5 lift counts, due to the importance of wing maximum lift in determining aircraft low speed performance.
2. Improving the confidence of transonic drag rise behaviour prediction to within 1% aircraft drag, due to the importance of highly precise drag prediction in correctly capturing fundamental design trades.
3. Improving the accuracy of wing aeroelastic assessment to within 1% aircraft drag. As wing designs move to more efficient and flexible structures, an accurate knowledge of the wing shape in all conditions becomes a necessary pre-requisite.