The COCOON project will develop and demonstrate integrated seat climatization, ventilation and air supply system, maturing the technology bricks to TRL6 for a standard economy 3-seat row with a target weight of <1kg to achieve personalised comfort control and a 2% fuel saving through reduced thermal load at the cabin level. Thermoelectric heating and cooling modules combined with a ventilation and air supply system will be controlled via a tablet or smartphone to provide advanced in-seat personalised microclimate control. The project will leverage previous work by UTRC which developed an in-seat microclimate control module for the business jet market by adapting it to the economy sector. UTRC Ireland will work with UTAS GEC Poland to design, test and validate a prototype of the system which will be integrated into BE’s current economy 3-row seat configuration and tested at the BE facility in Kilkeel, Northern Ireland.

In order to maintain the leadership of the European aeronautics, the SuCoHS project will investigate potential weight and cost savings in expanding the use of composite materials in areas of demanding high thermal conditions (high temperature and fire). In particular, this project envisages new structural concepts with novel multi-material composites to provide high resistivity against thermal, mechanical and fire loading. These developments also cater for high production rates, providing a cost competitive manufacturing process at minimum material and energy consumption, while reducing the requirement for visual inspection or rework. New solutions for structural health monitoring are considered within the structures to enable condition-based maintenance taking into account actual loading and structural conditions. Instead of an isolated investigation of innovative technologies the project will develop an integrated framework for the adaption of these promising technologies to different aeronautic components to increase efficiency during design, manufacturing and operation. Three industrial use cases are defined from real industrial design challenges to set requirements, to validate new technologies and to demonstrate technical feasibility near to operation environment: a high temperature resistance nacelle component, a composite aircraft interior shell and a tail cone panel substructure. The SuCoHS project gathers 14 partners from 7 European countries, amongst which 2 technical universities, 3 research centers, 4 SMEs and 8 large companies. The requested EU funding amounts to 6 638 944 Euros for a 3-year project duration.