Xabier Pérez Ferrero

Personal Information

1. Name: Xabier Pérez Ferrero
2. Position/Title: Aerospace Engineer
3. Department: Advanced materials

Professional Background

4. Briefly describe your professional background and area of expertise:

   I graduated from Aerospace Engineering, broadening my expertise in Design Engineering and Additive Manufacturing. I started working as CNC operator for aerospace industry while pursuing Design Engineering master studies, following a short period as a production engineer. I then fully dived into the aerospace industry as a turbine engine design engineer and finally landed in R&D of Additive Manufacturing with composite materials.

5. What inspired you to pursue a career in this related field, e.g., aviation, carbon-free emissions etc?

   Since childhood, I was fascinated by spaceships, rockets, machinery, and loud engines.

   Later on, I discovered the possibility to combine everything together, studying Aerospace Engineering with expertise in the engine field. During the first years of my professional career, I found out about additive manufacturing and stuck with it since then, hoping to build aerospace technology using additive manufacturing with futuristic materials.

Role in H2ELIOS

6. What is your role in the H2ELIOS project?

   I lead the large-format additive manufacturing (LFAM) related tasks to 3D print a composite cryogenic vessel using a robotic system.

7. Can you describe your main responsibilities and tasks?

   I have worked from the concept stage, advising on the design requirements to build a vessel using additive manufacturing, developed new AM technology to make possible the manufacturing of the composite vessel and the manufacturing process itself, from the material testing stage to the final demonstrator.

8. How does your work contribute to the overall goals of the H2ELIOS project?

   Our activities and developments have provided the composite tank to store clean cryogenic fuel.

Project Insights

9. What do you find most exciting about working on the H2ELIOS project?

   To be part of the team that is bringing to society and to the aerospace industry one of the prototypes for clean and sustainable aviation.

10. What has been the most challenging aspect of your work on this project?

    To overcome the cryogenic conditions at which the tank needs to perform and to provide a composite vessel compliant with them.

11. Can you share a significant milestone or achievement your team has reached so far?

    The moment when the material testing results validated our initial samples, and to see the tank demonstrator assembled and ready for testing.

Personal Experience

12. What have you learned during your time working on H2ELIOS?

    To bring additive manufacturing from quasi-experimental technology to produce samples to the standards of the aerospace industry, to work under the most arduous conditions.

13. How has this project influenced your professional development?:

    To remind myself and to experience the value of perseverance, that even when targets look impossible to achieve, it is worth just to keep working towards them

Fun Facts

14. What do you enjoy doing in your free time?

    I enjoy sports such as CrossFit, climbing, snorkeling, mountaineering… Being outdoors in nature every week! I am also a big live music enthusiast; I go to watch concerts very often and learn to play bass. I like to ride off-road motorcycles and daydream about a long adventure trip through exotic natural places.

15. Share a fun fact about yourself that your colleagues might not know:

    I love working on my vegetable garden while listening to metal music.

Closing Thoughts

14. Is there anything else you would like to share about your experience with the H2ELIOS project?

    Even if the outcome finally turns out to be not the best that we had targeted, there would be a future day sitting on a plane propelled by hydrogen that would remind us that back in the day we were there laying the foundation rocks.