This is a collaboration between the Universities of, Sheffield, Bristol, Southampton, (UK-ARC members) and Salford, working alongside over fifty project partners from industry to government. This creates a scale and depth of expertise and facilities that is unprecedented for Acoustics PhD training.
For more information, EPSRC Centre for Doctoral
Training in Sound Futures
Cranfield University is testing the use of hydrogen as a fuel for airside operations, supported by Connected Places Catapult. A hydrogen-powered aircraft tow tug from ULEMCo Ltd was refueled with hydrogen using HyQube and then used to push-back and tow the university SAAB 340B aircraft. The Zero Carbon Turn Project aims to decarbonise aircraft turnarounds and ground operations at airports, and involves TUI, Regional and City Airports Group and ULEMCo. The project recently won a place in the Hydrogen Challenge Sandbox announced by the UK Civil Aviation Authority.
UK-ARC member University of Manchester plus the University of Bath, Cardiff University, GKN Aerospace, Marshall and Parker Meggitt are partners in the HyFIVE consortium supported by the ATI. The consortium, led by Marshall, is poised to achieve significant milestones, including the development and testing of scalable liquid hydrogen fuel system technologies, culminating in a fully integrated hydrogen fuel system ground demonstration. Read the GKN press release HERE. UK-ARC universities are closely involved in the developing aviation hydrogen challenge alongside the ATI and the Hydrogen Capability Network (HCN).
Research remains the key enabler of aerospace and academia is the crucible of its development through our growing network.
The UK-ARC community is central to helping industry pull through innovation. Our technology themes cover all the challenge areas that will be addressed at FI24. Hear our story and plans first hand by visiting us in Hall 1 where we are part of the Farnborough Aerospace Consortium presence.
Come and visit us in Hall 1 stand 1317
On the 20th of February UK ARC held its inaugural one-day Research Directions conference at the Royal Aeronautical Society.
The day was attended by academics from many universities, including representatives from all the 11 founding universities of the consortium, government departments and from industry. We were pleased to share our developing knowledge; research priming work and networking activities with stakeholders and have presentations from stakeholders on external initiatives that bear upon academia. There were useful panel discussions held after overview presentations that explained the narratives and outcome from each of the six theme groups. UK-ARC’s research themes are More Energy Efficient Aircraft (MEEA), Hydrogen, Electrification, Materials and Manufacturing, Sustainable Aviation Fuels and Air Transport.
UK-ARC’s mission is to build a community that encourages aligned and impactful research. As we move towards UK-ARC2, we can see that our theme group workshops, direct ATI and sector networking and the conference are strengthening research connections between academics and the broad aerospace and aviation community.
Sir Iain Gray chaired
the Conference
Valuable connections were made
during the networking breaks
More Energy Efficient Aircraft Panel discussion
The GW4 Alliance of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter Universities hosted delegates from the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) and the UK Aerospace Research Consortium (UK-ARC) at IAAPS, a University of Bath-led £70 million R&I centre focused on propulsion technologies, situated at the Bath and Bristol Science Park.
The visit focused on showcasing our region’s hydrogen capabilities, world-class facilities and collaborative research and innovation projects in order to identify connections and develop future opportunities.
Roger Gardner, UK-ARC Network Manager spoke about how they help organisations identify and engage with the UK’s aerospace research capability, aligning research agendas with industry to support the development of collaborative research projects. UK-ARC’s consortium partners include several universities including GW4 institution University of Bristol.
The University of Strathclyde’s, Advanced Forming Research Centre (AFRC), part of the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland Group and ITP Aero have co-developed a project to minimise energy use and material waste and enhance productivity throughout the lifecycle of the aerospace superplastic forming process.
The three-year, £750,000 project aims to develop a predictive tool to identify the lowest temperature possible for successful superplastic forming (SPF) across ITP’s product range.
Follow the LINK for more information
A Strathclyde researcher has been awarded a prestigious European Research Council starting grant for a five-year project to electrify aircraft using a novel superconducting machine technology.
Professor Min Zhang, from the Applied Superconductivity Laboratory, will focus on three ground-breaking technologies to enable the use of high temperature superconductors for electrical propulsion motors with high performance and reliability.
The University of Strathclyde’s Advanced Forming Research Centre (AFRC) is teaming up with global aerospace components manufacturer, Spirit AeroSystems, to help shape the future of aircraft design and manufacture. Working together on developing innovative manufacturing technologies, the two organisations will seek to address the key challenges facing the industry to help the UK supply-chain achieve its full potential.
Joining the internationally acclaimed manufacturing and engineering research centre as its latest Tier One member, the collaboration will also see Spirit become one of the first companies to run projects out of the new Lightweight Manufacturing Centre. When the Centre officially opens later this year it will be the first new part of the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS) which also includes the AFRC as part of a wider, global-scale, manufacturing centre of excellence and skills academy.
The University of Strathclyde is to establish a new innovation hub within the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District Scotland. This will support the journey to deliver a sustainable net-zero economy by accelerating the development and deployment of technology supporting decarbonisation.
An agreement has been signed with Rolls-Royce which will see Strathclyde develop the new facility within the company’s Inchinnan plant to enable the University to scale-up its wide-ranging collaboration activities with industry partners across sectors such as heat, transport and power electronics.