A new £17 million project led by the University of Edinburgh and Rolls-Royce is aiming 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,” said the university.

“Using cutting-edge physical and computer modelling, the project will seek to help keep the UK aviation sector at the forefront of aerospace sustainability …

“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.”

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.

The University of Edinburgh 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.