Title: Investigating hybrid Turbo-ElectRic AicrafT Engines (ITERATE)

Duration: 2022-2025

Funding scheme: ERDF TRAKE project

Funds: EUR 200,000

Principal investigator: Dr Robert Camilleri

This project investigates hybrid turbo-electric aircraft engines as a cleaner means to power air transport. Aviation facilitates global mass transit of people and goods and is a primary driver of the economy. Despite the current slow-down in the aviation industry due to COVID-19, the industry has proven to be a resilient one. In the coming years, this is therefore expected to recover to pre-COVID-19 growth rates of approximately 5% per annum. Yet, these growth rates are environmentally unsustainable. This project addresses this by proposing a new generation of hybrid turbo-electric engines. The hybrid-electric engine requires a lower use of battery storage whose low energy density still presents key limitations to fully electric aircraft. Hybrid-electric engines may yield significant benefits particularly in short haul twin-engine turboprop airliners (such as ATR 72). Such aircraft perform over 40% of all commercial flights and thus small fuel savings collectively account to a significant impact on the environment. The project will also extrapolate a technology route to Category D single aisle aircraft with turbo fan engines (such as the A320 or B737), thus identifying missing technological building blocks.