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performance. Additive manufacturing removes these limits, enabling intricate geometries and optimized flow paths that ensure efficient cooling without adding unnecessary weight or complexity.
The design freedoms of additive manufacturing make a critical difference. With AM, we can create lightweight, highperformance heat exchangers that would be impossible to produce using conventional methods. Our expertise allows us to achieve exceptionally thin walls and apply tailored depowdering strategies for each part, pushing the technology to its limits. The result is components that can be precisely optimized for each system’ s operating conditions, maximizing thermal efficiency and heat transfer while minimizing material use.
In essence, AM allows engineers to design for performance, not for process, and that’ s key to advancing the technologies that will power cleaner flight.
From hydrogen to hybrid: collaboration in action
Conflux’ s collaborations illustrate how AM is being applied to real-world sustainability challenges across the aerospace spectrum. With Airbus, we’ re developing heat exchangers for the ZEROe program that feature intricate internal channels optimized for hydrogen fuel cell cooling. These geometries, achievable only through AM, allow efficient heat transfer while keeping weight to a minimum. In the TheMa4HERA consortium, we’ re designing scalable heat exchangers for hybrid-electric regional aircraft, while also providing shared insights from 28 partners across Europe to maximize energy efficiency and minimize material use.
Our partnership with AMSL Aero brings these principles to regional air mobility. Together we’ re developing an optimized hydrogen fuel cell cooling system for Vertiia, AMSL’ s long-range zero-emissions VTOL aircraft. The heat exchangers we’ ve designed balance weight, volume, and aerodynamic performance to support flight distances of up to 1000 kilometers – an unprecedented range for a hydrogen-electric VTOL.
Each of these projects underscores a shared vision: that innovation through collaboration is essential to creating a sustainable aviation ecosystem.
The broader impact: sustainability beyond propulsion
While thermal management is our business, the sustainability potential of AM extends beyond individual components.
AM enables localized production, reduced material waste, and shorter supply chains – all vital to minimizing the environmental footprint of aircraft development. It also supports rapid iteration and digital validation, meaning better designs can be tested and refined faster, without the need for costly tooling or excess material.
Beyond efficiency, AM can contribute to circularity: parts can be remanufactured, repaired, or redesigned without discarding entire assemblies, extending their useful life and reducing resource consumption. Localized, on-demand production not only lowers carbon emissions from transport but also strengthens supply chain resilience, making aircraft development more adaptable and sustainable. Economically, faster iteration and reduced waste can lower costs for manufacturers and operators, creating a model where environmental responsibility and commercial viability reinforce each other.
The result is a new manufacturing paradigm where performance, efficiency, and sustainability are no longer competing priorities, they’ re part of the same design process.
Looking ahead
As aerospace companies around the world accelerate toward their 2030 and 2050 sustainability targets, additive manufacturing
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