Research in South Africa to unlock aircraft innovation on cutting edge – expert

12th September 2025
By: Lumkile Nkomfe
Creamer Media Writer

The investment in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) research for aircraft in South Africa is crucial for driving innovation, decarbonising aviation, reducing prototype costs and sustainably developing the local aerospace industry.

This investment would position South Africa to be a participant in global advancements, including the development of future technologies such as hydrogen-powered aircraft, highlights University of Cape Town’s (UCT’s) Professor Arnaud Malan.

As the South Africa Research Chair in Industrial CFD at UCT, his research benefits from the institution’s computational infrastructure, including access to high-speed computing and large-scale data storage.

Malan and the UCT Industrial CFD team’s recent research in aircraft CFD focuses on cryogenic modeling for liquid hydrogen (LH2) fuel, supporting industry decarbonisation, and fuel sloshing dynamics to reduce wing structural loads and develop more flexible aircraft.

Malan’s team works with a range of companies including aerospace and defence company Airbus to address the challenges of storing and managing LH2 fuel, which requires extremely low temperatures for use in future hydrogen-powered aircraft and this research also directly contributes to making aviation more sustainable by facilitating the transition to hydrogen fuel.

“CFD is a combination of applied mathematics and programming and so we build models to describe the physics. We are currently focused on liquid slosh, and we have recently completed a high-profile project funded by the European Union called Sloshing Wing Dynamics, or SLOWD. It was a fantastic success and the directive there was to start evaluating liquid fuel slosh in composite wings because they are quicker to manufacture,” Malan says.

He adds that a composite wing has far less structural damping and, when it is excited by turbulence or manoeuvres, it takes a longer time for it to settle down from the induced vibrations.

This culminated in a full-scale wing mock-up of a modern Airbus A320 wing at an Airbus plant in Bristol, England. Malan and his team are now working to model this experiment and validate their CFD software.

Malan also highlights the importance of creating comprehensive CFD models to optimise the aerodynamic performance of aircraft for better fuel efficiency and overall performance.

He adds that LH2, as a promising, emission-free fuel for future aircraft, could enable emission free regional flights by acting as either direct fuel or in fuel cells to power electric motors.

While LH2 boasts high energy per unit mass, it requires significantly larger storage volumes than traditional jet fuel, necessitating design changes to accommodate bulkier tanks.

“The nice thing about LH2 is that, from an energy density point of view, I think its two to three times better than jet fuel. However, the problem lies in volumetric efficiency as it takes up a lot of space. So, it’s going to have to be a tank somewhere in the fuselage probably, and it must be stored at about -250 °C,” Malan explains.

He adds research into this challenge is a key objective of the new EU project called Hydrogen Aircraft Sloshing Tank Advancement (HASTA), which is headed by the Polytechnic University of Madrid, in Spain, noting that the project is investigating the thermodynamics involved in this undertaking.

Besides HASTA being another flagship project in which Malan and his team are involved, there are also greater demands and requests from industry to use the team’s in-house software and, consequently, it has developed a spin-off software development company called Elemental Numerics to commercialise its modelling technology. This spinoff company is in touch with various overseas entities that are interested in acquiring the technology.

Challenges, Future Trends

Despite South Africa previously having the Aerospace Industry Support Initiative, which was funded by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition, there is a dearth of funding instruments for aerospace research.

Noting how expensive aerospace research and innovation can be, Malan says that risk sharing in aerospace innovation – where typically an original-equipment manufacturer shares the significant financial burdens and rewards of a new product development with suppliers – could be highly effective in a local context.

This collaborative approach spreads the upfront investment and associated risks across multiple companies within the aerospace ecosystem, thereby fostering a collective capacity to innovate and develop complex aircraft programmes that would be too costly or challenging for a single entity to undertake alone.

Regarding future trends in CFD for aircraft design and development in South Africa and around the world, Malan notes that there will be more niche and specialised codes for specific applications to enhance aircraft performance as well as an increased drive to develop high-efficiency methods that are more accurate and efficient than all the existing commercial codes.

“CFD is one of those real areas that can absolutely boom if there is a bit of will from not only us as researchers, but also from the government. We already punch above our weight in this area and with added impetus from various stakeholders within our industry, we can really grow this economy into a powerhouse,” Malan concludes. 

Edited by Nadine James
Features Deputy Editor