«Clean Sky» is up and running

08.02.2008

Like all other industrial activities, air transport is faced with the ecological and political challenges posed by global warming. The European Clean Sky research program is at the front line of the technological responses currently being developed.

Caption on the bottom of the page* (© Frédéric Lert)

The Clean Sky program was officially launched on 5 February 2008. It is the logical and anticipated response to the reflection process that has been underway in Europe since 2001 on the future of air transport and on how to go about tackling the environmental issues. Last December, an important milestone was attained when the European Council of Ministers adopted the Clean Sky technological initiative. With this program, Europe is offering itself the means to produce the technological building blocks for developing air transport that will be more respectful of the environment in the decades to come. According to Marc Ventre, Chairman of the Clean Sky Executive Committee and CEO of the SAFRAN Aerospace Propulsion branch: “The aerospace industry is highly aware of its environmental responsibilities and over the last few decades has contributed to a drastic reduction in both emissions and noise. Today, with traffic expected to keep growing, Clean Sky is paving the way for a new major step in this ongoing process”. By 2020, Clean Sky should help to satisfy compliance with the objectives defined by ACARE: a 50% reduction of C02 emissions, an 80% reduction of NOx emissions and a 50% reduction of noise levels.

Here are some more statistics, to help illustrate the ambition and unifying potential at European level of this initiative: Clean Sky today has 86 organizations from 16 nations under its umbrella. The program will be half-financed by the European Commission, with the other half coming from the industry, for a total of 1.6 billion euros.

Efforts are being focused on six broad research topics (“Integrated Technology Demonstrators”, or ITDs), to culminate in the production of demonstrators on the ground and in the air. Three of these ITDs concern the aircraft itself (airliners, regional aircraft and helicopters), two deal with cross-functional issues (engines and systems), and the final one is concerned with the life cycle of aircraft. The consistency of the Clean Sky initiative as a whole is to be monitored by a “Technology Evaluator” who will quantify the impact on the environment of the combined results of the ITDs.

Teamwork

Caption on the bottom of the page** (© F.Aragon/Aero3A)

The principal European aerospace companies are to work on these ITDs, alongside various SMEs and research institutes. SAFRAN is one of the main participants, and is even co-directing research on engines with the British engine manufacturer, Rolls-Royce. Companies of the SAFRAN Group - Aircelle, Hispano-Suiza, Labinal, Messier-Bugatti, Messier-Dowty, Sofrance, Technofan, Snecma, Snecma Propulsion Solide, Techspace Aero, Turbomeca, Microturbo and Sagem Défense Sécurité - are all involved on the different ITDs to various degrees.

Two years from now, the technical choices and principal lines of research will have been established for each of these ITDs. The next stage, in around 2012-2013, will see the first ground and flight testing of a wide range of technological demonstrators for civil aircraft and helicopters. Forty years after the appearance of the first twin-spool engines that revolutionized jet propulsion, the European industry is today - through Clean Sky - offering itself the means to initiate a brand new revolution.

* One of the goals of Clean Sky is reducing noise. The A380 is among last generation aircraft, that make much less noise than previous generations.
** Marc Ventre, Chairman of the Clean Sky Provisional Executive Committee (and president of the Aerospace Propulsion branch at SAFRAN) launched Clean Sky on February 5th, 2008 in Brussels together with European Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik and ASD President Åke Svensson.

Clean Sky for clean skies (article in Webmag 4, September 2007)
Clean Sky Site