Hi, my name is William Resende and I work for Airbus.
What was your original motivation to become a researcher?
I have a strong conviction that the most effective way to drive positive change in the world is through technology. Therefore working on engineering was a logical step into this direction.
What is your (main) research area today?
Fuel Cell Propulsion System for aviation.
What is the main objective of your team in BRAVA?
Improving the fuel cell propulsion technology to enable lighter, faster and cheaper aircrafts for short range applications. More concretely, the team is working in improving the overall architecture by reducing complexity and components. In addition, the team is working to better integrate the components (physically) to make sure the size of the propulsion system is reduced.
What expertise and facilities does your team have to meet those objectives?
Generally we need people with skills in several engineering disciplines like mechanical, chemical and electrical. We have to simulate several conditions and use cases to size the components, run CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) and FEA (Finite Element Analysis) simulations and use other types of model based engineering tools to get the design right before building it. Once the components are designed, they are prototyped either in house or at suppliers and integrated for testing. We have state of the art test facilities to validate performance and durability of those components as well as on fuel cell system level with power levels up to 1.2 MW.
Which aspects of your research at BRAVA do you believe are the most innovative and what unique opportunities offer BRAVA to yourself and/or your organisation?
Overall BRAVA is a very innovative project (the naming already gives it up -Breakthrough fuel cell technologies for aviation) so we work on several fronts here. From innovative cooling concepts, to new stack materials like catalysts and membranes as well as electrical air compressors capable of operating up to 25,000 ft.
How do you see the future use of the BRAVA-results and the impact of BRAVA-project in our daily lives?
BRAVA is critical for us to advance state of the art components and enable a competitive hydrogen-powered aircraft based on fuel cell propulsion. Reaching all the targets proposed in BRAVA, will enable this base technology to be further developed within a product development process for Airbus ZEROe aircraft program which will in the future ensure an offer of decarbonised aircrafts for short and medium range applications.
