Advancing the development of hybrid electric aircraft towards greener civil aviation

The EU-funded SIENA project, as part of the Clean Sky2 programme, aims to accelerate the development of hybrid electric and other novel aircraft concepts through the identification of technologies that can be scaled-up to larger aircraft towards the development of a greener civil aviation transport system. Beyond technical aspects, the project will also consider economic, operational and regulatory aspects to ensure the technologies are viable for the industry as a whole. These include the impact of the advanced aircraft architectures on infrastructure, vehicle safety, operational reliability and industrial competitiveness. The early identification of radical technologies and architectures should help address regulatory gaps early in the design process, ensuring that regulations and technology development progress at the same pace.

Objective

The project presented in this proposal has the ambition to accelerate the development of hybrid electric A/C technologies in larger vehicles through the identification of scalable technologies that are reusable across vehicle classes. Economic, operational and regulatory aspects, will be considered in the project beyond the technical considerations. The project presented in this proposal has the ambition to accelerate the development of hybrid electric A/C technologies in larger vehicles through the identification of scalable technologies that are reusable across vehicle classes. Economic, operational and regulatory aspects, will be considered in the project beyond the technical considerations. Those include key elements such as impact on infrastructure, vehicle safety, operational reliability and industrial competitiveness, thus ensuring that the technologies proposed are not only technically feasible but viable for the industry as a whole. The early identification of radical technologies and architectures will help identifying early in the process regulatory gaps that need to be addressed to ensure that regulations and technologies development progress at the same pace. United Technologies Research Centre Ireland and Politecnico di Milano will partner to enhance the design process for radical hybrid electric propulsion architectures through the Scalability Investigation of hybrid Electric concepts for Next-generation Aircraft: SIENA project.
SIENA introduces an innovative notion of scalable-by-design aircraft concepts by performing an automated and exhaustive design space exploration and systematic analysis of novel technologies, and their integration in new vehicle architectures. Additionally, the technologies and architectures evaluation process will be enhanced by innovative machine learning algorithms, while taking into account economic and operational considerations. The generated breakthroughs will guide upcoming projects under Horizon Europe program.

More info: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101007784 ↗