Aviation delivers social and economic benefits across the world. However, this comes at an environmental cost. The Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe (ACARE) has set aggressive targets to reduce in-flight CO2 emissions by 75% and NOx emissions by 90% when compared to the year 2000. All aircraft movements on the ground are also set to be emission-free. This project specifically addresses this latter part by developing key components that allow to harvest a portion of the kinetic energy from a landing aircraft, store it temporarily in a flywheel and use it for engine-less taxiing. The reduction of emissions on the ground is important as it has strong links with respiratory illnesses, amongst others. As airports and cities continue to grow, these get in closer proximity to each other, heightening the effects of the problem.

A preliminary techno-economic study shows that the ability to recover some of the landing energy of an A320 or B737 aircraft and store it for later use in an engine-less taxiing system produces significant savings in operational costs and emissions. This project will address this challenge by developing:
1) Lightweight electro-mechanical solutions encompassing high power density motor/generators - one as a high power density, fault-tolerant machine, directly coupled to the aircraft wheels, and one as a high speed machine coupled to a flywheel;
2) A power dense flywheel for energy storage, which would preferably be integrated and magnetically coupled with the high speed motor/generator;
3) Power dense electronics, enabling the effective transfer of power between motors and aircraft grid.