Clean Sky
Clean Sky has provided a valuable framework for strengthening our work with major aerospace companies in Europe facilitating the delivery of technologies based on a long-term roadmap for the benefit of European society.
This programme, funded jointly by the European Commission and contributions from Private Members, has allowed university research to be integrated into the research and development programmes of industry and provided industry with a process and system to select and deploy the best in class solutions into their development programmes.
Our success in Clean Sky and Clean Sky 2 is due to our ability to understand industry requirements and their research needs through our Institute for Aerospace Technology.
- Overview of Clean Sky projects
- Facilities
- Partnerships with industry
Our key strengths in Clean Sky are:
- Our large team of post-doctoral Research Graduates allows us to deliver research and meet industrial needs
- We have been able to deliver high quality work that is grounded in real world problems that we can present to our undergraduate and postgraduate students
- Our work is equipping industry with high quality staff as well providing interesting research problems to solve
- Our PhD Graduates are award winning in Clean Sky
- We have hosted a number of high profile events including the Systems for Green Operations Annual review, technical workshops on key enabling technologies for More Electrical Aircraft and several Steering Committees.
- We are delivering 25 Clean Sky Projects worth €49m
- We have four core partner projects across all three Integrated Technology Demonstrators (ITDs)
- Our participation in the programme has led to the East Midlands region being listed in the top ten Regions in Europe in terms of participation in the programme
The Institute for Aerospace Technology at University of Nottingham is very proud to be marking our 10 year anniversary in Clean Sky this year, and we thank all of our partners, academics and researchers for their continued commitment and drive.
Professor Patrick Wheeler, University of Nottingham
The University of Nottingham had Associate Partner status in Clean Sky within the Systems for Green Operations, Integrated Technology Demonstrator (ITD).
Nottingham is the only University to be an Associate Partner in its own right.
In addition to our Associate Partner work, the University participated in Clean Sky via projects secured through Calls for Proposal activity in:
- Aircraft Electrical Generation System with Active Rectification and Health Monitoring (AEGART)
- Multi-source regenerative systems power conversion (REGENESYS)
Our aerospace specialists at Nottingham have already demonstrated their ability to create aircraft components and systems to pass Technology Readiness Level (TRL) gate reviews as follows:
- Novel Power Electronics Modules for Aircraft applications to TRL6
- Green Taxiing wheel actuator for Smart Operations on Ground to TRL5
- Helicopter Electro-Mechanical Actuation System (HEMAS) with power converter and electrical motor hardware components up to TRL5
- ARC fault detection and mitigation to TRL4.
Our University Clean Sky team members sat on the Governing Board of the Joint Undertaking and have been the only University to sit on this top level committee.
The University of Nottingham is a Core Partner and Member of Clean Sky 2 in the Systems, Airframes and Engines ITD, where researchers are working with established aerospace Primes and Supply Chain organisations on topics such as:
- Technology bricks for More Electric Aircraft
- Design and Manufacturing of Advanced Wing for Compound Helicopters
- Advanced Hybrid Ice Protection Systems
- Two-phase Flow for Aero-Engine Bearing Chambers
The University has secured in total 25 projects through Clean Sky 2 and is working on several key platforms including:
- Airbus Helicopters RACER
- Leonardo NexGen Civil TiltRotor
- Rolls-Royce Ultrafan
- Safran next generation turboprop
- Airbus future fuselage
- Leonardo future turboprop
- EFan-X demonstrator by Airbus, Rolls-Royce and Siemens
Clean Sky 2 Projects
More information on some of our projects can be found on their pages: