A new £17m project led by the University and Rolls-Royce aims to help drive the development of sustainable fuels and technologies for the aviation industry.
The project will harness the University’s expertise in supercomputing to explore the use of fuels such as hydrogen in gas turbine engines for aviation.
Using cutting-edge physical and computer modelling, the project will seek to help keep the UK aviation sector at the forefront of aerospace sustainability.
Industry partnerships
The virtual exascale calculations transform aviation (VECTA) project is among 23 Prosperity Partnerships announced by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
These will tackle key industry challenges in areas from drug manufacturing and artificial intelligence (AI) to cybersecurity.
The partnerships are supported by a £41 million investment from the UK Government, matched with a further £56 million from industry and academia.
Also among the newly announced partnerships is a project led by the University’s School of Mathematics and insurance group AXA. The £2m project will develop new ways to understand, measure and ultimately insure against risks associated with commercial applications of AI in sectors such as transport and healthcare.
These partnerships show the range of real-world challenges the UK’s world-class research base is helping to tackle – from cutting carbon emissions in heavy transport, to improving access to life-saving medicines. By backing scientists to work hand-in-hand with industry, we’re combining cutting-edge research with business expertise to turn science into practical solutions that can make a difference in people’s daily lives.
Lord Vallance
UK Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology
Turbine simulations
The VECTA project is led by EPCC, the supercomputing centre at the University of Edinburgh, together with Rolls-Royce. It also involves the Universities of Cambridge, Warwick and Surrey, Queen's University Belfast, and companies International TechneGroup and Turbostream.
The work builds on a previous partnership with Rolls-Royce – known as ASiMOV – that involved the creation of the world’s first complete gas turbine computer simulation.
ASiMoV marked a major leap forward in how we design critical gas turbine systems. Now, with the introduction of the UK’s National Supercomputer, as part of project VECTA we’re taking whole-engine simulation to the next level – enabling the development of even more environmentally sustainable gas turbines by modelling sustainable aviation fuel and potential cryogenic fuelled future engines to assess behaviour and improve performance. VECTA’s optimised simulation also helps reduce UK energy consumption, supporting the drive to net zero.
Tony Phipps
Chief of Future Methods, Rolls-Royce
Supercomputing expertise
The University has been home to the UK’s high-performance computing services for more than 30 years.
It was announced recently that the University's Advanced Computing Facility will house the UK's next national supercomputer.
Once operational, the new supercomputer will provide high-performance computing capability for key research and industry projects across the UK.
VECTA represents the latest in a long series of successful collaborations between EPCC and Rolls-Royce dating back to the 1990s. Rolls-Royce's engines are at the pinnacle of engineering technology today. To model them, and develop them further for new fuels, we must push the boundaries of computational science. Prosperity Partnerships provide the perfect framework to bring together the leading group of experts from academia and industry necessary to tackle such complex challenges.
Professor Mark Parsons
Academic Lead and Director, EPCC
