European iNitiative for Low cost, Innovative & Green High Thrust ENgine

Project Information

ENLIGHTEN

Grant agreement ID: 101082326

DOI

10.3030/101082326

EC signature date 18 October 2022

Start date 1 November 2022

End date 31 July 2026

Funded under

• Digital, Industry and Space

Total cost

€ 17 586 647,75

EU contribution

€ 17 585 397,25

Coordinated by

ARIANEGROUP SAS
France

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ENLIGHTEN (European iNitiative for Low cost, Innovative & Green High Thrust ENgine)

Reporting period: 2023-11-01 to 2024-10-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The space sector is a source of economic growth, jobs and exports, participating in all Key Strategic Orientations of the EU strategic plan. Faced with growing competition and technological disruption it is vital to act in support of European space launcher development in order to preserve European independent access to space. Confronted with smaller market than competitors and lower launch prices, European launchers must improve their competitiveness by halving launch price in the short term. In the long term, Europe will create common building blocks for an integrated and competitive European array of launchers of all scales with reusability functionalities.
Europe must thus concentrate efforts on liquid propulsion system which can be half of the launcher cost and is critical for reusability.
In the frame of ENLIGHTEN (European iNitiative for Low cost, Innovative & Green High Thrust Engine), the consortium will strive to increase the competitiveness of European High thrust engine by preparing a demonstrator of Green High Thrust Engine based on Liquid Hydrogen using:
- New low cost subsystems in Engine ignition, nozzle extension, valves and integrated flexible lines,
- The latest advances in additive manufacturing to reduce the cost and number of engine parts,
- Edge AI & machine learning algorithm to develop the first space engine Health Monitoring System in Europe necessary to implement reusability.
The project aims to maturate these technologies and to prepare in parallel a demonstrator that will implement the different technology in order to speed-up the maturation. The Engine demo platform would be tested in the frame of a future project in the High Thrust Engine P5 test facilities of DLR. ENLIGHTEN will achieve its goal to lower the cost of launch engines with its consortium mixing aerospace actors like ArianeGroup, AVIO, DLR and ONERA with startups and SME working on ALM and AI as well as research organization/academia such as Fraunhofer and KU Leuven and will rely on AZO to ensure dissemination of the results to benefit all industries of the EU.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The second year of the project allow continuing the full implementation of the workplan, with in parallel, the maturation plan of each technologies including 4 sub-systems, the Additive Manufacturing processes and the Health Monitoring Systems and the Engine Demon platform development and test campaign preparation.
The subsystem development started the second year with the conclusion of the preliminary reviews that gave a clear status on the maturation plan with relevant orientation outlined by the Expert’s panels of each review. The year continued with the implementation of the review’s recommendations as well as the preparation (end of design and production) of the first hardware to be tested for the immerged chamber valves, the laser ignition system, and the single element nozzle extension. This second year was concluded by the start of the laser ignition system test campaign in the M3 bench at DLR in order to contribute to understand and to design the multiplexed laser ignition system.
With regard to the additive manufacturing process the second year allow the consortium to address the ADIRA withdrawal of the project, as well as to continue the maturation of laser metal deposition process with the first produced hardware by LCV, IREPA and Fraunhofer. The multimaterial process continued this development plan to define a relevant set of parameter based on both manufacturing test and sample characterization. This elements and the workplan status were discussed during a production strategy review.
The health monitoring system on this side continue allow to develop a set of software dedicated to several failure cases and integrated in the first version of the hardware electronic card that should be connected into the ISFM bench in order to evaluate its behavior. The workplan includes as well the evaluation of several method in order to identify failure on external measurement signal such as acoustic of video. This year ends with the realization of a design review allowing the expert’s panel to check the right implementation of the previous recommendation and the provide orientation with regard to the remaining works.
And finally the Engine Demo Platform continue this definition in order to welcome the different technology and to clarify the way to define the test campaign in order to contribute to the maturation of the different subsystems. The performance of the Preliminary Review of the platform in April concluded to the implementation of several key point up to the end of the second year in order to state of the performance of the platform and to provide relevant orientation for the next step of the platform definition.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The main results of this second year of project may be synthetized:
- Production of the multiplexed laser ignition system & start of the test campaign,
- Production of the first immerged electrical chamber valves not finished end of 2nd year & test bench design & production not finished end of 2nd year,
- Production of a nozzle mock-up & start of the final Enlighten mock-up with the selected process
- Design, definition & justification of the target chamber lines with innovative flexible element & mass flow rate measurement capability,
- Production of representative scale lines with laser metal deposition (3 target process),
- Parameter optimization & investigation of material barrier to mature multimaterial process,
- Definition and training of three HMS software to identify several engine failure cases,
- Production of an electronic card, integration of the previous algorithm and first connection to the representative bench,
- Investigation of innovative algorithm based on acoustic & video measurement,
- Preliminary design of an engine demo platform to test the different technology in real environment.