The project presented in this proposal has the ambition to accelerate the development of hybrid electric A/C technologies in larger vehicles through the identification of scalable technologies that are reusable across vehicle classes. Economic, operational and regulatory aspects, will be considered in the project beyond the technical considerations. The project presented in this proposal has the ambition to accelerate the development of hybrid electric A/C technologies in larger vehicles through the identification of scalable technologies that are reusable across vehicle classes. Economic, operational and regulatory aspects, will be considered in the project beyond the technical considerations. Those include key elements such as impact on infrastructure, vehicle safety, operational reliability and industrial competitiveness, thus ensuring that the technologies proposed are not only technically feasible but viable for the industry as a whole. The early identification of radical technologies and architectures will help identifying early in the process regulatory gaps that need to be addressed to ensure that regulations and technologies development progress at the same pace. United Technologies Research Centre Ireland and Politecnico di Milano will partner to enhance the design process for radical hybrid electric propulsion architectures through the Scalability Investigation of hybrid Electric concepts for Next-generation Aircraft: SIENA project. SIENA introduces an innovative notion of scalable-by-design aircraft concepts by performing an automated and exhaustive design space exploration and systematic analysis of novel technologies, and their integration in new vehicle architectures. Additionally, the technologies and architectures evaluation process will be enhanced by innovative machine learning algorithms, while taking into account economic and operational considerations. The generated breakthroughs will guide upcoming projects under Horizon Europe program.

The ENIGMA project will address the development of the Centralized Smart Supervisory (CSS) controller by means of formal and methodological approaches. During a first stage, the mathematical optimization tools will be used to obtain the formulation for the Enhanced Electrical Energy Management (E2-EM) control logics. This will ensure the ability to formally prove the correctness and optimality of the control action by construction. The CSS controller will be interfaced with the lower-level controllers of the aircraft Smart-Grid Network and the Energy Storage and Regeneration System delivered by currently running Regional Integrated Aircraft Demonstration Platform projects. This strategy will provide an optimal management and sharing of available on-board electric power during overloading and failure conditions such that the overload capability requirement for main generators sizing can be removed leading to substantial reduction of generators’ mass. The developed controller will also be capable of expansion to include interfaces with other lower-level systems to be developed by future Regional projects. The overall system will be designed, developed and integrated by the ENIGMA team, and validated at TRL5 through testing on the Regional IRON BIRD Ground Demonstrator over a period of 36 months. ENIGMA aims at being a significant breakthrough in the field of the on-board energy management techniques, by exploiting a novel approach for their introduction and definition of global E2-EM. This will pave the road towards more efficient, greener aviation. The ENIGMA team brings together leading aerospace systems companies, through United Technologies Research Centre Ireland and Aeromechs, and leading academic institutions, The University of Nottingham and Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, whose track record and complementary skills will ensure innovative development and later commercial exploitation of the developed CSS.

The COCOON project will develop and demonstrate integrated seat climatization, ventilation and air supply system, maturing the technology bricks to TRL6 for a standard economy 3-seat row with a target weight of <1kg to achieve personalised comfort control and a 2% fuel saving through reduced thermal load at the cabin level. Thermoelectric heating and cooling modules combined with a ventilation and air supply system will be controlled via a tablet or smartphone to provide advanced in-seat personalised microclimate control. The project will leverage previous work by UTRC which developed an in-seat microclimate control module for the business jet market by adapting it to the economy sector. UTRC Ireland will work with UTAS GEC Poland to design, test and validate a prototype of the system which will be integrated into BE’s current economy 3-row seat configuration and tested at the BE facility in Kilkeel, Northern Ireland.

MASTECS will bring to the market innovative and exploitable technology for multicore processor timing analysis (MTA). It will be used by critical embedded software industries (focusing on automotive and avionics) to support advanced software functions (such as autonomous driving) which are competitive factors in every new product. MASTECS will enable these industries to exploit increased computing performance from multicore platforms allowing new functionally-rich critical and performance-demanding software, leading to reduced fatalities in the road, safer and cheaper air travel and reducing CO2 profile of planes and cars. MASTECS builds on TRL6 MTA technology developed by its partners and currently being used in several commercial pilot studies by aerospace and automotive tier-1 suppliers. MASTECS will bring it to TRL8, addressing automation, certification, and qualification requirements. The innovative inter-disciplinary MASTECS approach combines the hardware (multicore) expertise (BSC), software timing expertise (RPT), and end-user expertise in terms of requirements and certification (MM and UTRC). This award-winning technology will be commercialized to open a new market in which MASTECS will provide a highly competitive solution by focusing on process, automation and certification support to meet the needs of the safety critical industry. MASTECS implements a solid dissemination and communication approach that ensures the offered product reaches its targeted industrial audience. MASTECS will launch a combined product/service offering for the aerospace and automotive markets, significantly reducing the time-to-market of their systems. The project will boost MTA technology for market take-up within 2 years of project start. Benefiting from first-to-market positioning helps to achieve faster and deeper market penetration. Exploitation also includes the creation of a new SME, spinning-out from BSC, whose registration has already started.

SATERA will propose and validate an integrity estimator for space-based ADS-B systems based on crosschecking positions reported in ADS-B messages with position estimations provided by space-based MLAT systems. To reach this goal, SATERA will apply a stepped approach starting by the definition of an initial OSED providing a high-level operational description at system level, identifying all the involved stakeholders, and detailing the CNS equipage of the fleet and the available air traffic services. Then, SATERA will adapt the system architecture described in the ED-142A for a composite ground-based surveillance system providing ADS-B and WAM surveillance to cope with the particularities of a space-based system. Next, the research team will develop theoretical models to assess and benchmark the proposed system architecture leading to a full list of functional requirements and interfaces description that will be captured in a Functional Description Document. SATERA will also adapt for a space-based system the performance requirements it has to meet according to the ED-142A for ENR-low/medium/high traffic densities. Afterwards, SATERA will develop a system performance prediction tool to compute the theoretical performance of a MLAT system whose receiving stations are onboard of a constellation of LEO small satellites. This tool will take into consideration all the error sources that can affect the MLAT system performance and will be used to update the initial OSED (if needed) and system architecture, and to select the most suitable constellation for validating the SATERA solution at TRL2 using an end-to-end system evaluation tool that will be developed by the research team as an evolution of the system performance prediction tool. The TRL2 validation will consist of several validation exercises addressing the provision of composite space-based ADS-B+MLAT surveillance in the EURSAM and NAT corridors for realistic traffic.