The conference aimed to provide a place of information sharing, discussion, and research collaboration for world’s researchers in aerospace and aviation. The conference highlighted several research categories, Aviation Science & Technology (Airport), Aviation Science & Technology (MRO), Aerospace Engineering (Aircraft), Aerospace Engineering (Propulsion), Aviation Science & Technology (Multidisciplinary), Applied Science & Engineering, Aerospace Engineering (Aerodynamics), and Aerospace Engineering (Structure and Combat).

The first session of plenary keynote session saw a presentation by Jusman Syafi’I Djamal, Indonesian Minister of Transportation in 2007-2009 who currently serves as President Commissary of PT KAI (Indonesian Railways Company). He discussed about the current hot topic in Aerospace and Aviation, “The Future of Airline Industry”.

“Aviation industry is a dynamic industry with a lot of crisis, thus we have to keep adapting to all kind of crisis,” said Jusman. According to him, aviation industry is a one of solid industries in keeping its existence amidst complexity and uncertainty. Aviation industry is expected to grow within the next upcoming years despite the situation. For example, Asia Pacific market is expected to grow because the market serves half of world population and is currently experiencing economic growth, including Indonesia which is predicted as one of fastest growing markets.

Photo by: ICASA 2018 committee

Indonesia’s dense aviation activity has pushed the infrastructures development in many airports in Indonesia which improve local economy, such as construction of new buildings, expansion of airport land, and modernization of existing airport structure.

In addition to improvement and development of infrastructures, other issues regarding Indonesian aviation is the rampant development of Indonesian aircraft manufacture industry and yearly high demand for pilot. These provide supporting evidences that Indonesian aviation industry is experiencing positive trend.

On the second session, a professor from Technische Universität München (TUM), Florian Holzapfel, discussed about a research he conducted titled “Requirement Driven Model Based Development of Modern Control Laws for Fly-by-Wire Aerial Systems”.

Florian said that manufacture of an aircraft is executed in several fundamental stages, such as integration and verification. These processes have significant roles in the manufacture of an aircraft and will cause negative effect if it does not fulfill the requested requirements and specification.

On the third session, Wahyu Kuntjoro, a professor from Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia discussed a research topic entitled “Structural Health Monitoring of Fighter Airplanes – Operator Perspective”. He explained that fatigue of an aircraft is common in aviation. However, control is needed to avoid negative effect of the phenomenon in a long term. Therefore, he asserted the significance of monitoring and inspection of aircraft frame fatigue. This is related to several challenges, such as project cost, certification, validation, and properties of aircraft material.

The next session was presented by the last speaker, Lavi Rizki Zuhal as the head of Aerospace Engineering Study Program of ITB. He began with brief explanation about ITB campus before continuing to a presentation titled “Modern Tools for Aerospace Engineering Research and Design”.

Currently, Lavi explained, science and technology are increasingly developing and complex than ever before. According to the need, aerospace and aviation require modern experimental and computational devices to continue research, one of them is by machine learning approach. The approach enables optimization and improvement of performance, as well as discoveries of new phenomena that are useful for future researches through the use of relating models and techniques.

After the plenary keynote session, ICASA 2018 held other series of event such as poster and research presentations. The presentations were brought by various researchers in various fields. It was held on 24-25 October 2018 at Aula Barat ITB and will present significant topics that contribute to the development of aerospace and aviation research in Indonesia.

Reporter: Verdyllan Nurendra Agusta