Reduction of skin-friction drag, achieved through local modulation of aircraft skin surfaces, offers great potential for significant fuel savings and emissions reduction. Active skin-friction reduction systems, implemented using hundreds to thousands of embedded Smart Patches to form a Smart Skin system could provide a crucial step increase in fuel efficiency by reducing aerodynamic drag through modulation and suppression of turbulent airflow. This will not only bring a step change benefit to the aviation industry, but also crucial cost savings in a climate of rising fuel cost and increasingly strict emissions policies. The cross-disciplinary work presented in this paper focuses on overcoming key challenges in developing a novel, fully-scalable, fault-tolerant wireless network system that will function as a Wireless Nervous System for the future Active Aircraft. Challenging issues are addressed in the aspects of active flow control, fault-tolerant wireless networking, integrated approach to health monitoring of those systems and impact on fuel planning and safety.
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