National Centre for Combustion and Aerothermal Technology

About NCCAT

NCCAT is funded through a partnership comprising the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) and Innovate UK, with support from Rolls-Royce plc and Loughborough University.

NCCAT will lead research excellence and technology deployment in low emission aero gas turbines, strengthening the UK’s ability to benefit from the predicted growth in the civil aerospace market, with exploitation potential beyond aerospace in areas such as the automotive and energy sectors. It will enable industrial problem-owners to visit and work closely with world-class academic researchers, this will promote multi-disciplinary and integrated design methodologies, ensuring that new technologies are translated from theory to practice as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

NCCAT builds on the experience of a large, well-established research group whose activities span more than a quarter of a century, with its original roots traced back to the late 1960s. The state-of-the-art facilities and in-house expertise, coupled with the wider facilities available on the University campus offers clients a unique package.

NCCAT is situated on the Loughborough University Science and Enterprise Park (LUSEP), one of the UK’s largest science parks and host to 70+ companies on a 53-hectare site. Co-located with the existing Unsteady Fluid Mechanics Laboratory, NCCAT will provide:

  • Access to both world-class facilities and world leading research expertise for industrial partners.
  • Access to facilities for fundamental research supported by various National and European funding streams, critical to the development of next generation combustion systems.
  • A training ground for current and future aerospace engineers in a critical skill area for the UK. This will include access to the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Future Propulsion and Power and previously the CDT in Gas Turbine Aerodynamics (a partnership between the Universities of Cambridge, Loughborough and Oxford).