Turbotech, Ansys Collaboration Advances Light Aviation

Turbotech, a supplier of aviation solutions, is leveraging Ansys simulation to deliver a hydrogen-fueled turbine engine for small-scale passenger planes, vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicles, drones, and more. In partnership with the BeautHyFuel project, Turbotech is demonstrating a hydrogen-fueled turboprop engine, emphasizing the role of Ansys simulation in advancing next-generation technology.

Turbotech takes a scalable approach, using Ansys simulation to help design and validate a gas turbine that is fuel agnostic — supporting a streamlined transition to hydrogen.

Simulation-led product development allowed Turbotech to quickly identify the two best nozzle designs for real-world testing. Specifically, Fluent delivered high-fidelity predictions of the flame shape and temperature, and after 30 hours of hydrogen burn the nozzles retained nearly identical structural integrity, and the turbine did not increase emissions output. Ansys solvers also enabled Turbotech to run these simulations on boosted workstations, avoiding the need for large clusters traditionally required for combustion modeling.

Turbotech first developed a novel regenerative turbine through the Ansys Startup Program. This work helped set up for a digital thread that connects and manages data, enabling the retrofit for hydrogen. 

“Turbotech’s goal is to bring a built-in, deeply integrated solution to the light aviation market that reduces carbon emissions and empowers pilots to focus solely on flying,” says Guillaume Malet, chief technology officer at Turbotech. “The reliability of Ansys helped us tremendously throughout the redesign, successfully allowing us to retrofit the turbine for hydrogen on a much shorter timeline. It would not have been feasible to test or optimize our prototypes without Ansys simulation.”

This series of tests is part of the BeautHyFuel project, supported by the French Civil Aviation Authority and led by Turbotech and Elixir Aircraft, in partnership with Safran, Air Liquide and Daher.

“Ansys is dedicated to supporting customers like Turbotech in expanding the limits of what can be achieved through simulation,” says Walt Hearn, senior vice president of customer excellence and worldwide sales at Ansys. “This first-pass success was made possible not only by Turbotech’s expert engineers and their deep understanding of complex multiphysics, but by Ansys’ strong technical support across all phases of the project. The collaboration is critical to helping Turbotech save significant time, costs, and resources as they advance this new market.”

Visit Ansys at the Paris Air Show June 16-19 at Chalet 214 to see Turbotech technology on display, and Hall 4 to learn more about Ansys digital engineering technology. 

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.