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EXperimental Aircraft for European Leadership In Aviation

Project description

Aircraft testing for a greener future

Aviation’s environmental impact is a critical challenge, with long-range aircraft contributing nearly half of all air transport emissions in 2019. The urgency to revolutionise aviation technology is growing, as the sector aims to cut emissions and mitigate climate impacts by 2050. Current methods for testing disruptive aircraft designs are limited, slowing innovation and increasing risks. Addressing these challenges requires novel solutions to validate radical technologies and de-risk future aircraft development. The EU-funded EXAELIA project is pioneering advanced flying testbeds up to pre-design to accelerate the adoption of both hydrogen-powered and blended wing body long-range aircraft. By combining multidisciplinary digital methods and modular testbeds, EXAELIA enables efficient validation of emerging technologies, paving the way for greener skies.

Objective

The objective of EXAELIA is to investigate and to answer the needs for novel flying testbeds for de-risking the development of disruptive future long-range aircraft, accelerating the reduction of all aviation emissions and its climate and environmental impacts in 2050.
EXAELIA investigates, through advanced multi-disciplinary digital methods, the potential emissions reductions of long-range air traffic offered by promising blended wing body aircraft configurations and by hydrogen-powered tube-and-wing configurations, including their constituting radical new technologies. Critical uncertainties are identified, in particular those requiring flight validation for de-risking the future aircraft development. For those flight test requirements which go beyond the capabilities of existing assets, novel flying testbeds are developed towards their preliminary design and demonstrated to answer the flight validation needs, efficiently combining these needs in potentially costly large-scale modular flying testbeds.
Roadmaps are prepared for the further development of the EXAELIA flying testbeds and their use in the development of the future long-range aircraft, entering into service before 2050 with a maximum contribution to reducing aviation impact and emissions (~49% of air transport system emissions in 2019 came from long range aircraft). Operational and business plans for these indispensable test bed assets are provided as well.
The EXAELIA consortium consists of the major European research centres and academia in future aircraft conceptual design and analysis, flight testing, and flying testbed development, and 4 SMEs, all with a strong record in collaboration. An Advisory Board, including European aircraft and engine manufacturers and further industries will provide guidance to achieving the objective and to obtaining their support to the roadmaps. The total grant request of this 42-month action is 16 233 889 Euros.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) HORIZON-CL5-2024-D5-01

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Coordinator

STICHTING NATIONAAL LUCHT- EN RUIMTEVAARTLABORATORIUM
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 2 480 031,75
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 2 480 031,75

Participants (22)

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