Get New Aircraft Off the Ground Faster

The air transport industry is expanding and the future of aviation is bright. But many challenges remain: How to develop novel commercial aircraft concepts that support sustainable and affordable air transportation? How to serve the emerging personal air mobility market? Do we need a new approach to get new aircraft off the ground faster?

Over the last decades organizations have built complex development processes based on their trusted knowledge and experiences to ensure safety and performance. Yet far too many major aircraft programs over the last 25 years have been plagued by problems discovered too late in the development process, causing multi-year delays and billions in unexpected costs.

Simulation-driven design has long been considered an important part of the answer to these problems. But simulation has not delivered its full promise yet. Why is it still not possible to perform structural simulation on a complete detailed aircraft model to de-risk ultimate loads? Why can the aerodynamic characteristics of a full wind-up turn still not be simulated? Today’s simulation processes are often too slow, disconnected and dependent on experts.

Plotting A Course Towards Digital Continuity

Imagine a future where every aircraft has a fully predictive, detailed virtual twin from early concepts to certification and beyond! Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE® platform offers a path to this future. It enables designers and simulation analysts to work on the same model, harmonize their data on a single platform, and assess numerous configurations to optimize design decisions and reduce the risk of late-stage failures.

But the complete, enterprise-wide digital transformation that is required to reach this vision is a huge challenge for aircraft manufacturers who cannot afford to completely disrupt proven development processes built on decades of company experience. That is why the 3DEXPERIENCE platform offers an incremental process of manageable steps towards the goal of complete business transformation. It begins with the management of simulation data and governance of simulation processes, followed by the use of multi-disciplinary design optimization and trade-off studies in the concept phase, before reaching the ultimate goal of fully connected design and simulation of detailed aircraft models.

1. In the first step we enable our customers to manage their simulation data and processes while preserving their investments made on existing solvers, whether they are SIMULIA legacy solvers or third-party tools. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform makes it possible to capture and share existing analysis methods, with easy collaboration between analysts in different simulation disciplines.

2. The aircraft concept design phase represents a good incremental starting point for integrated simulations on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, which offers unique capabilities to perform multi-disciplinary optimizations and trade-off studies to select the best concept with a high level of confidence in its potential performance.

3. The third step focuses on Validation and Verification (V&V) and the proper governance of simulation processes. The overall V&V strategy is planned and executed on the platform, simulation data are connected to requirements, and review and approval processes are streamlined.

4. Building on the data and process management capabilities established in the previous steps, the journey towards fully integrated modeling and simulation (MODSIM) on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform can begin. As the aircraft design becomes more detailed, complex simulation models are updated in lockstep with the evolving design. Simulations are explicitly connected to program requirements, and simulation data are governed by well-documented approval processes. Data can be accessed and reused by all stakeholders in a secure way, bringing together people within and outside the organization to collaborate seamlessly. Finally, a faster certification process with dramatically reduced risks of discovering costly late-stage problems is enabled, driven by the right combination of physical and virtual prototyping and less flight testing – all managed on 3DEXPERIENCE.

Variations of this process can be made based on each customer’s unique requirements. Dassault Systèmes industry experts are ready to support aerospace and defense customers in a collaborative journey towards MODSIM, connecting stakeholders, linking requirements, and harmonizing data and processes around simulation and testing on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. The result is faster product development that hits safety, sustainability and customer requirements, and dramatically reduces the risk of late-stage failures. This will open up whole new avenues of innovation – and help you get your new aircraft off the ground faster.

Read how domain experts and industry leaders transformed their engineering processes and business using the MODSIM approach.