Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ENLIGHTEN (European iNitiative for Low cost, Innovative & Green High Thrust ENgine)
Berichtszeitraum: 2022-11-01 bis 2023-10-31
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.
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.
The first year of the project was focus of the initialization of the project, the first step of the maturation plan of each technology and the synchronization of the Engine Demo Platform requirement and the technology maturation plan.
The project started the first of November 2022 and achieved a major milestone the first of June 2023 with the performance of the requirement review that aims to derive for each technology the system needs for both future applications and engine demo platform in order to provide system target for each technology maturation plan.
The first year ends with the performance of 6 preliminary reviews in parallel in order to evaluate the implementation of the maturation plan as well as the alignment with the engine demo platform needs.
The project started the first of November 2022 and achieved a major milestone the first of June 2023 with the performance of the requirement review that aims to derive for each technology the system needs for both future applications and engine demo platform in order to provide system target for each technology maturation plan.
The first year ends with the performance of 6 preliminary reviews in parallel in order to evaluate the implementation of the maturation plan as well as the alignment with the engine demo platform needs.
This first year shows results in the different workstreams implemented in ENLIGHTEN with:
- For key systems the definition and the production of first prototype hardware such as electric valves or nozzle extension mock-up.
- For additive manufacturing the first printed products in laser beam melting or laser metal deposition processes with part around 800mm size or the first Ni/Ti mulitmaterial sample printed in laser beam melting
- And for AI & Machine learning the first demonstration of AI algorithm performance to identify main engine default based on engine signals
- For key systems the definition and the production of first prototype hardware such as electric valves or nozzle extension mock-up.
- For additive manufacturing the first printed products in laser beam melting or laser metal deposition processes with part around 800mm size or the first Ni/Ti mulitmaterial sample printed in laser beam melting
- And for AI & Machine learning the first demonstration of AI algorithm performance to identify main engine default based on engine signals