AEROSPACE
AMULET
A high-temperature ceramic matrix composite fan,
for service above 800°C
PROGRAMME
AMULET, European programme
PARTNERS
Atmos Space Cargo
Walter Pritzkow Spezialkeramik
OUR ROLE
CFD, FEM, material behaviour and test campaigns
01
OBJECTIVE
A fan made of Ceramic Matrix Composite, turning at high speed at temperatures above 800°C. The point of building one is what it would make possible: lightweight, high-performance rotating machinery for aerospace systems, and beyond that for any industry that works hot.
The project ran within the European AMULET programme, with Atmos Space Cargo, a German company developing re-entry capsules for orbital science, and Walter Pritzkow Spezialkeramik, who manufacture advanced ceramic matrix composite components.
02
OUR CONTRIBUTION
Simulation and material analysis together: CFD to characterise the fan’s aerodynamic performance, FEM to assess structural behaviour under thermo-mechanical load, and an investigation of how CMC actually behaves — in particular deformation and shrinkage, which is where a ceramic stops resembling a metal.
We also defined and supported the experimental campaigns, cold and hot. All of it ran in step with the manufacturing process rather than ahead of it, which is the part that decides whether a design survives contact with a real furnace: a choice made on the screen shows up directly in the finished component.
03
OUTCOMES
Partly a set of limits, honestly established — the structural limitations of CMC and monolithic ceramics in this application — and partly a method: an iterative workflow of simulation and experimental validation that turned those limits into a development process instead of a dead end.
Along with it, a materially better understanding of how CMC behaves under real operating conditions, and numerical results correlated against experimental data rather than trusted on their own.
04
WHAT IT OPENS
CMC solutions were confirmed feasible for industrial use even at performance levels below the aerospace target — which is the finding that matters commercially, because it opens chemical processing, energy systems and metallurgy to the same design route.