By 2050, aviation could account for 39% of the UK’s carbon emissions unless current engines are replaced with zero-carbon alternatives. Hydrogen-powered gas turbines are a promising solution for long-haul flights, but no one has yet modelled a complete hydrogen turbine at the resolution needed to catch dangerous combustion instabilities before they occur. VECTA aims to build that capability using exascale supercomputers—machines capable of a billion billion calculations per second—to simulate the full physics of a hydrogen-burning engine in unprecedented detail. The project brings together the University of Edinburgh’s supercomputing centre, Rolls-Royce, four other universities, and two engineering firms. If successful, the simulations will allow engineers to design safe, efficient hydrogen turbines without relying solely on expensive physical prototypes. This could accelerate the introduction of zero-carbon aviation and help meet Rolls-Royce’s 2050 net-zero commitment. The work is applied engineering, not fundamental science: its value is measured in whether it helps bring a working hydrogen engine to market.
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As other sectors of industry decarbonise, and if current trends and technologies continue, aviation will be responsible for 39% of the UK’s total carbon emissions by 2050, up from 8% in 2021. Rolls-Royce is committed to achieving net-zero operation of all its products by 2050. There are three pillars to its strategy: (a) maximise the efficiency of current products; (b) ensure fleets are compatible with 100% Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF); and (c) develop alternatives such as electric and hydrogen propulsion. Fully electric flight is not suitable for long haul operations, for which hydrogen has been identified as a viable zero-carbon solution. VECTA’s ambition is to realise a unique Exascale multi-physics capability for modelling complete hydrogen gas turbines with the requisite resolution to credibly capture and remedy emergent behaviours. Our vision is that these capabilities contribute, in no small part, to the introduction of safe and efficient hydrogen powered gas turbines. VECTA builds on the highly successful “ASiMoV Round 2 Prosperity Partnership'” and takes it to a new level, with both new physical and computational modelling challenges. The project consortium, which like ASiMoV is led by EPCC, the supercomputing centre at the University of Edinburgh, together with Rolls-Royce, also includes the universities of Cambridge, Warwick, Surrey and Queen's University Belfast, as well as two further companies, ITI and Turbostream.
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