New chair 'Sustainable Aircraft Propulsion

Gangoli Rao has been investigating how aircraft can fly on sustainable energy carriers for quite some time. He is project leader of the APPU project, in which technologies such as Boundary Layer Ingestion and Hydrogen Combustion  are being developed that will make the next generation of Airbus A320 aircraft more energy-efficient and suitable for a mix of energy carriers, including hydrogen. Now the faculty will have its own chair in this field. "An important step," says Gangoli Rao: "Sustainable propulsion is essential for sustainable aviation. What's more: in a relatively short time, it can provide a 'quantum leap'”. For Gangoli Rao, this chair also means a 'quantum leap'. "With a (growing) team of researchers, we now have the critical mass to make an impact.” Apart from the colleagues within the department of Flow Physics and Technology, the chair will collaborate closely with Process and Energy, Maritime Technology, e-Refinery and Applied Physics. Within the faculty of Aerospace Engineering, the group will collaborate extensively with colleagues at the ANCE section, who can directly incorporate the climate effects of specific engine configurations and energy carriers into their research.