Sora Aviation secures £2.1 million funding from Aerospace Technology Institute programme for two R&D projects

UK start-up Sora Avi­a­tion has been award­ed UK Gov­ern­ment fund­ing for two cut­ting-edge research projects totalling £2.1 mil­lion, through the Aero­space Tech­nol­o­gy Insti­tute Pro­gramme.

The first project, BatWing, is a col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bath and focus­es on light­weight aero­space bat­tery pack tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ment and the inte­gra­tion of bat­tery packs onto air­craft wings.

This approach enhances air­craft safe­ty by iso­lat­ing bat­tery packs from the cab­in whilst also reduc­ing struc­tur­al mass through bend­ing relief at the wing root.

The project will deliv­er a bat­tery-wing sec­tion demon­stra­tor incor­po­rat­ing light­weight and fire­proof com­pos­ite enclo­sures, wing-inte­grat­ed ther­mal man­age­ment sys­tems and mod­u­lar mechan­i­cal instal­la­tion meth­ods designed to sim­pli­fy main­te­nance and improve oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy.

The sec­ond project is called SoraAero and part­ners Sora Avi­a­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ties of Bris­tol and Man­ches­ter, as well as Sophro­dyne Aero­space. It will help to push the bound­aries of aero­dy­nam­ics, aeroa­coustics, and aero­elas­tics sim­u­la­tion for eVTOL air­craft and under­stand com­plex inter­ac­tion­al effects unique to these air­craft con­fig­u­ra­tions.

By lever­ag­ing physics- con­strained arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence mod­els and advanced com­pu­ta­tion­al meth­ods val­i­dat­ed by exper­i­men­tal data, the project will enable Sora to opti­mise the S‑1’s design to min­imise noise, improve aero­dy­nam­ic effi­cien­cy, and enhance struc­tur­al per­for­mance.

Furqan, CEO of Sora Avi­a­tion, said: “These ATI-fund­ed projects are a mas­sive vote of con­fi­dence in the work we’re doing at Sora. The S‑1 is a unique air­craft tai­lored for afford­able and acces­si­ble air mobil­i­ty, and with the exper­tise of our uni­ver­si­ty part­ners backed by
fund­ing from the UK gov­ern­ment, we are ensur­ing it meets the high­est stan­dards of effi­cien­cy, safe­ty, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty.”

The ATI Pro­gramme is deliv­ered through a part­ner­ship of the Aero­space Tech­nol­o­gy Insti­tute, the Depart­ment for Busi­ness & Trade and Inno­vate UK.

The fund­ing is pro­vid­ed as part of the ded­i­cat­ed SME Pro­gramme and under­scores the UK’s com­mit­ment to advanc­ing sus­tain­able avi­a­tion tech­nolo­gies and posi­tion­ing the coun­try as a leader in elec­tric flight.

Jacque­line Cas­tle, Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer at the ATI, added: “The two projects from Sora Avi­a­tion showed inno­va­tion, close col­lab­o­ra­tion with acad­e­mia and SME part­ners, and a good insight into the chal­lenges that the new tech­nol­o­gy will address.

“The devel­op­ment of bat­tery pack­ing and enclo­sures in the BatWing project tar­gets sub­stan­tial weight sav­ings and offers the UK an oppor­tu­ni­ty to be a first mover in this space; while the ambi­tious SoraAero project will apply inno­v­a­tive use of a nov­el AI sys­tem to
sub­stan­tial­ly improve the air­craft design process.”