H2PULSE test campaigns for AIRBUS as part of the ZeroE innovation initiative
SERMA Energy, a leading player in electric mobility since its creation in 2018, continues its development momentum by announcing the acquisition of the company H2Pulse on Wednesday, October 25th.
H2PULSE and Airbus just successfully finished the second test campaign of the EMH2 project. This project is part of the larger ZeroE innovation initiative, launched by Airbus in September 2020, that aims to design a hydrogen-powered low-carbon emissions aircraft in comparison with actual aircrafts (https://www.airbus.com/en/innovation/low-carbon-aviation/hydrogen/zeroe). Hydrogen propulsion would be a way to make aerospace technologies more environmentally friendly, thus paving the way for a cleaner and more sustainable future for aviation.
This research and development project between H2PULSE and Airbus aims to assess the robustness of “off-the-shelf” components under electro-magnetic stress, such as high current circulation between specific metallic interfaces, in hydrogen and/or cryogenic temperature conditions. These tests simulate the situations that hydrogen-powered aircrafts could encounter in flight.
For this occasion, H2PULSE designed and built a test bench allowing the filling of the various components with gaseous hydrogen or liquid nitrogen. Next, the filled components are struck by several thousand amps of electrical current produced by a dedicated generator. Components robustness is then evaluated thanks to a hydrogen leak detector with high sensitivity.
Test results obtained during the EMH2 project will help provide data to design safe hydrogen aircraft, paving the way for a significant reduction in the aerospace industry’s environmental impact. Notably, the results of those tests will participate in answering this critical question: will hydrogen planes be robust when struck by lightning strikes during flight?