New Prosperity Partnership to transform aviation carbon emissions  

In order to decarbonise, aviation - along with other industries - must introduce new fuels and technologies. With the recent UK Government £750 million supercomputer announcement, a University of Edinburgh and Rolls-Royce led consortium will accurately model and remedy emerging behaviours arising from use of environmentally friendly fuels in future gas turbine engines. This has huge long-term potential for the UK economy, keeping the aerospace sector at the forefront of aviation sustainability. 

The Virtual Exascale Calculations Transform Aviation (VECTA) Prosperity Partnership builds on the success of ASiMOV, an earlier Strategic Prosperity Partnership with Rolls-Royce to create and run the world’s first complete gas turbine simulation, and extends this with both new physical and new computational modelling approaches, focusing on environmentally friendly fuels in future gas turbine engines. 

The VECTA consortium comprises: 

• EPCC, The University of Edinburgh (Academic Lead) 

• University of Cambridge 

• University of Warwick 

• Queen's University Belfast 

• University of Surrey 

• Rolls-Royce plc (Industry Lead) 

• TurboStream Ltd 

• International TechneGroup Ltd. 

Lord Vallance, Science Minister, said: “These partnerships show the range of real-world challenges the UK’s world-class research base is helping to tackle – from cutting carbon emissions in heavy transport, to improving access to life-saving medicines. By backing scientists to work hand-in-hand with industry, we’re combining cutting-edge research with business expertise to turn science into practical solutions that can make a difference in people’s daily lives.”  

Tony Phipps, Chief of Future Methods at Rolls-Royce, said: “ASiMoV marked a major leap forward in how we design critical gas turbine systems. Now, with the introduction of the UK’s National Supercomputer, as part of project VECTA we’re taking whole-engine simulation to the next level – enabling the development of even more environmentally sustainable gas turbines by modelling sustainable aviation fuel and potential cryogenic fuelled future engines to assess behaviour and improve performance. VECTA’s optimised simulation also helps reduce UK energy consumption, supporting the drive to net zero.” 

Prof. Mark Parsons, Academic Lead and Director of EPCC, said: “VECTA represents the latest in a long series of successful collaborations between EPCC and Rolls-Royce dating back to the 1990s. Rolls-Royce's engines are at the pinnacle of engineering technology today. To model them, and develop them further for new fuels, we must push the boundaries of computational science. Prosperity Partnerships provide the perfect framework to bring together the leading group of experts from academia and industry necessary to tackle such complex challenges.” 

Further information  

EPSRC Prosperity Partnerships is a flagship programme that brings together leading UK-based businesses and universities to develop transformative new technologies, processes and skills with the potential to deliver societal impact and economic growth. Twenty-three new Prosperity Partnerships will tackle key industry challenges in areas from drug manufacturing and artificial intelligence to cybersecurity. 

The UKRI Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is funding the partnerships with a £41 million investment, matched with a further £56 million from businesses and academia. Since 2017, when the initiative was launched, a hundred Prosperity Partnerships have received a total share of more than £600 million from EPSRC, industry partners and research organisations. 

UKRI announcement: UK businesses and academia partner up in cutting-edge research

Research at EPCC