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Ultra Performance Wing

Project description

Grounding aviation’s environmental impact

The EU’s Clean Aviation objectives aim to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, noise and other pollutants from aviation activities in Europe. In this context, the EU-funded UP Wing project will develop key technologies for ultra-efficient short/medium-range aircraft. Specifically, it will integrate ultra-performance wing concepts with the aim of achieving a minimum fuel burn reduction of 30 % compared to the state-of-the-art reference Aircraft A321neo. Bringing together an interdisciplinary consortium consisting of airframe integrators, industry, research establishments, and academia, the project will develop enabling technologies. The project’s outcomes will be well aligned with the development plans of future aircraft entering into service in 2035 with 75 % market penetration until 2050.

Objective

The Ultra Performance Wing project will validate, down select, mature and demonstrate key technologies and provide the architectural integration of “ultra-performance wing” concepts for targeted ultra-efficient Short/Medium Range aircraft (SMR), i.e. 150-250 PAX and 1000-2000nm range.

The project directly addresses the Clean Aviation objectives: fuel burn reduction of minimum 30% aircraft level, compared to the state-of-the-art reference Aircraft A321neo. UP Wing will consider 2 aircraft configurations, covering both exploitation horizons outlined in Clean Aviation impact objectives: a high aspect ratio SAF wing with turbofan engine targeting 10-13% and a dry high aspect ratio wing with open rotor up to 17% energy efficiency efficiency increase on wing level.

UP Wing will develop the integrated high aspect ratio SAF wing up to TRL4 until the end of this project and will provide concepts studies for several dry wing configurations.
The interdisciplinary European consortium, consisting of airframe integrators, industry, research establishments and academia will develop the related enabling technologies covering all relevant engineering disciplines. Performance monitoring considering Impact Monitoring in close collaboration with the architecture project will be done. For all technologies, the project objectives are broken down to individual targets to be monitored. Ground, wind tunnel and virtual testing are foreseen. Thanks to multidisciplinary optimisation the overall wing design for Configuration 1 will ensure the proper integration of all technologies up to TRL4. These results will be picked up in a second Clean Aviation phase achieving TRL6 until the end of the Clean Aviation programme.

These Clean Aviation objectives are well aligned to the development plans of future aircrafts entering into service in 2035 (SAF SMR & H2 Regional), with 75% market penetration until 2050. Academia involved will ensure proper scientific exploitations via lectures, conference contributions, journal proceedings whereas the industrial partners will mature specific technology bricks to TRL4 and higher.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

HORIZON-JU-IA - HORIZON JU Innovation Actions

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) HORIZON-JU-Clean-Aviation-2022-01

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Coordinator

AIRBUS OPERATIONS GMBH
Net EU contribution
€ 4 518 219,56
Address
KREETSLAG 10
21129 Hamburg
Germany
Region
Hamburg Hamburg Hamburg
Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
Links
Total cost
€ 6 454 599,38

Participants (27)

Partners (2)