The aim of HERFUSE proposal is to design innovative fuselage and empennages suitable for the future Hybrid-Electric Regional aircraft (HER) that will contribute to the overall target to reduce Green House Gases (GHG) emissions. HERFUSE will study the challenges on fuselage and empennages layout, material, components, manufacturing and assembly derived by integration of the relevant fuselage systems for HER as defined in the SRIA for a Hybrid-Electric Regional Aircraft and in HER-01 topic. HERFUSE integrates features and components necessary to regional hybrid-electric propulsion and complementary systems as well as improves weight, durability, aerodynamic efficiency and operational issues. The technologies and solutions matured in this project shall be aligned and feed with models, analyses and actual test data HERA project on regional aircraft (HORIZON-JU-CLEAN-AVIATION-2022-01-TRA-01). HERFUSE technologies, manufacturing and assembly of critical components will make feasible achieving the targeted performance gains of HER enablers such as low GHG energy sources (batteries and fuel cells), their storage (probable liquid in hydrogen case), their distribution and management, operational and safety features, thermal management provisions, electrical and thermal insulation. Technical solutions set by the HERFUSE will contribute then to the overall target and studies performed at aircraft level in HERA to reduce emissions. Namely, HERFUSE integration requirements will be concurrent and complementary to the aircraft-level ones set into HERA.

HERA will identify and trade-off the concept of a regional aircraft, its key architectures, develop required aircraft-level technologies and integrate the required enablers in order to meet the -50% technology-based GHG emission set in SRIA for a Hybrid-Electric Regional Aircraft. The HERA aircraft, having a size of approximately of 50-100 seats, will operate in the regional and short-range air mobility by mid-2030 on typical distances of less than 500 km (inter-urban regional connections). The aircraft will be ready for future inter-modal and multi-modal mobility frameworks for sustainability. The HERA aircraft will include hybrid-electric propulsion based on batteries or fuel cells as energy sources supported by SAF or hydrogen burning for the thermal source, to reach up to 90% lower emissions while being fully compliant with ICAO noise rules. The HERA aircraft will be ready for entry into service by mid-2030, pursuing to the new certification rules, able to interact with new ground infrastructure, supporting new energy sources. This will make HERA aircraft ready for actual revenue service offering to operators and passengers sustainable, safe and fast connectivity mean at low GHG emissions HERA will quantitatively trade innovative aircraft architectures and configurations required to integrate several disruptive enabling technologies including high voltage MW scale electrical distribution, thermal management, new wing and fuselage as well as the new hybrid-electric propulsion and related new energy storage at low GHG. To support this unprecedented integration challenge, HERA will develop suitable processes, tools and simulation models supporting the new interactions, workshare in the value chain and interfaces among systems and components. HERA will also elaborate on the future demonstration strategy of a hybrid–electric regional aircraft in Phase 2 of Clean Aviation to support the high TRL demonstration required for an early impact for HERA solutions.

The Ultra Performance Wing project will validate, down select, mature and demonstrate key technologies and provide the architectural integration of “ultra-performance wing” concepts for targeted ultra-efficient Short/Medium Range aircraft (SMR), i.e. 150-250 PAX and 1000-2000nm range. The project directly addresses the Clean Aviation objectives: fuel burn reduction of minimum 30% aircraft level, compared to the state-of-the-art reference Aircraft A321neo. UP Wing will consider 2 aircraft configurations, covering both exploitation horizons outlined in Clean Aviation impact objectives: a high aspect ratio SAF wing with turbofan engine targeting 10-13% and a dry high aspect ratio wing with open rotor up to 17% energy efficiency efficiency increase on wing level. UP Wing will develop the integrated high aspect ratio SAF wing up to TRL4 until the end of this project and will provide concepts studies for several dry wing configurations. The interdisciplinary European consortium, consisting of airframe integrators, industry, research establishments and academia will develop the related enabling technologies covering all relevant engineering disciplines. Performance monitoring considering Impact Monitoring in close collaboration with the architecture project will be done. For all technologies, the project objectives are broken down to individual targets to be monitored. Ground, wind tunnel and virtual testing are foreseen. Thanks to multidisciplinary optimisation the overall wing design for Configuration 1 will ensure the proper integration of all technologies up to TRL4. These results will be picked up in a second Clean Aviation phase achieving TRL6 until the end of the Clean Aviation programme. These Clean Aviation objectives are well aligned to the development plans of future aircrafts entering into service in 2035 (SAF SMR & H2 Regional), with 75% market penetration until 2050. Academia involved will ensure proper scientific exploitations via lectures, conference contributions, journal proceedings whereas the industrial partners will mature specific technology bricks to TRL4 and higher.

The FASTER-H2 project will validate, down select, mature and demonstrate key technologies and provide the architectural integration of an ultra-efficient and hydrogen enabled integrated airframe for targeted ultra-efficient Short/Medium Range aircraft (SMR), i.e. 150-250 PAX and 1000-2000nm range. To enable climate-neutral flight, aircraft for short and medium-range distances have to rely on ultra-efficient thermal energy-based propulsion technologies using sustainable drop-in and non-drop-in fuels. Besides propulsion, the integration aspects of the fuel tanks and distribution system as well as sustainable materials for the fuselage, empennage are essential to meet an overarching climate-neutrality of the aviation sector. Green propulsion and fuel technologies will have a major impact on the full fuselage, including the rear fuselage, the empennage structure as well as cabin and cargo architecture in so far as the integration of storage and the integration of systems for the chosen energy source are concerned (H2, direct burn, fuel cell). Not only do the specific properties of hydrogen necessitate a re-consideration of typical aircraft configurations, requiring new design principles formulation and fundamental validation exercises, but they also raise a large number of important follow-on questions relating to hydrogen distribution under realistic operational constraints and safety aspects. The project will explore and exploit advanced production technologies for the integrated fuselage / empennage to reduce production waste and increase material and energy exploitation with Integrated Fuselage concept selected (maturity TRL3/4) until end of first phase in 2025. An anticipated route to TRL6 until end of the Clean Aviation programme in 2030 will ensure entry-into-service in 2035.