LightLand

For aviation to achieve net zero emissions and meet rising demand for passenger and freight travel, aircraft efficiency must be significantly improved. Recent changes replacing aluminium with carbon fibre and steel with titanium have shown the impact advanced materials can have on fuel-burn and hence Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. However, there remain components in aircraft such as landing gear systems, where the loading conditions, operating environment and component life expectancy exceed the performance of the conventional lightweight materials mentioned above. TISICS ultra lightweight metal composites can now deliver the exceptional performance landing gear systems need in very demanding environments. With stiffness double that of titanium and **compression strength 50% to 100%** greater than steel, titanium composites offer an exceptional performance alternative. Increased corrosion resistance reduces the need for harmful, environmentally unfriendly coatings. TISICS' **Net Shape manufacturing** result in very low material waste compared to typical 90% waste from steel forgings. This reduces environmental impact from manufacture through the entire aircraft life, enabling an exceptional solution to create cleaner and greener aircraft. Most direct replacement components are 35% lighter than the current solutions, but utilising design optimisation methods, future components can be up to 70% lighter. For example, replacing the major tubular components on an Airbus A320 aircraft with titanium and aluminium matrix composites would save over 1000kg per plane and deliver over **2 million tonnes of CO2** emission reduction for the world's A320 aircraft fleet. In the first phase of this project, working extensively with Safran Landing Systems, TISCS identified two landing gear components where metal matrix composites offer **greater than 40% weight savings**, which can be manufactured to demonstrator level in the Phase 2 programme and provide viable production economics in the near-term. The UK is a world-leader in the production of continuous fibre metal matrix composites and this project catalyses industrialisation and high-value UK manufacturing job creation. This project accelerates world-leading UK technology development to near-term products. Successful completion of the project will generate the validation needed for industrialisation investment and early product entry on current airframes, as well as establishing the baseline case for radically new zero-emission aircraft concepts such as blended wing body (BWB). The mass savings on landing gear and further high performance components in the future will help deliver the weight reduction necessary for future electric and hydrogen propulsion systems, currently under development to deliver net zero aviation by 2050\.