Otto Aviation

Imagine pouring warm honey on a table: It flows smoothly and evenly over the surface. This is an example of laminar flow – a fluid, organized stream of liquid or air that experiences very little friction.

For decades, aircraft companies have been unable to engineer planes that can achieve sustained laminar flow. This is partly due to the shape of conventional aircraft, and partly because traditional aluminum manufacturing techniques result in uneven surfaces that add friction. However, California-based start-up Otto Aviation has unlocked a ground-breaking solution after a decades-long journey leveraging Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE® platform on the cloud.

Using flight-test data, Otto has been able to predict the optimal aircraft shapes that can achieve a high degree of laminar flow. With new, ultra-high precision manufacturing techniques, new shapes are manufactured from advanced carbon-fiber materials to achieve laminar flow in flight. Its aircraft can be manufactured without a rivet, seam or gap anywhere in critical laminar flow regions.

The result? The Phantom 3000, a business aircraft that travels at nearly 500 miles per hour and uses 60% less fuel than conventional aircraft, resulting in carbon emissions per seat mile that are comparable to electric vehicles.

“In business jet travel, sustainability is really important,” said Scott Drennan, president and chief operating officer, Otto Aviation. “Business jets consume a lot of fuel. Our aircraft offers our customers an opportunity to reduce their emissions by 50% just using Jet A fuel, and 90% if they choose sustainable aviation fuels. Our unique proposition is having a lower-weight aircraft that reduces the economic burden on our customers, both from a purchasing standpoint and in terms of direct operating costs. We think it will afford our customers to operate in a new way, serve their customers in a new way, and then bring more people into the business jet aviation space with our green discount. You’ve heard of the notion of the green premium – that everything green costs more money. Our green actually costs less.” 

Otto has leveraged Dassault Systèmes’ solutions since its inception in 2007. For Drennan, adopting industry-leading tools at the outset was a strategic decision. “Because we’re a startup, we essentially have a clean slate to use all of the solutions offered by Dassault Systèmes to create a robust digital enterprise,” he said. “What I love about our partnership with Dassault Systèmes is that they understand where startups are coming from, and that’s a big deal to us. When a larger entity stands behind us as a startup, it gives us the courage to move forward and know that we can accomplish our goals.” 

By leveraging the full capabilities of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud – including CATIA for design, SIMULIA for simulation, ENOVIA for project and data management, and DELMIA for manufacturing operations – Otto established a single digital thread that spans the depth and breadth of its business.

“The 3DEXPERIENCE platform helps us with the synergies among all those different stages of development from the earliest days of our aircraft conceptualization, all the way through to maintaining the aircraft and supporting our customers,” Drennan said. “That’s the most important part for us: To have a common, powerful and consistent platform across all of those stages of the product development life cycle.” 

Establishing a single version of the truth is vital for Otto to manage regulatory and certification requirements – a rigorous process demanding full traceability and data transparency. “The main challenges we face in our activities are around type certification,” Drennan said. “We’re using the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to look at our requirements, measure them against our designs and then present those requirements and designs to the certification authorities for ultimate compliance. So, the requirements are integrated into all of the design and build functions in a way that’s transparent to us, but really important to the certification agencies, because they can see the relationship between those requirements and what we’ve designed and built.” 

This isn’t the only hurdle the platform helps Otto to clear. Aviation is a talent-scarce industry, and having industry-leading solutions allows the company to get the most from its existing resources while also attracting a new generation of employees. “We’re growing and hiring great talent using great tools,” Drennan said. “We’re trying to bring a team together to build the aircraft from scratch, from our clean sheet through production.” 

The synergy created by the platform results in a happier, more productive workforce that collaborate and communicate incredibly effectively. “The platform helps us see things at a human level rather than through all the technical details that are involved at the various stages,” Drennan said. “Those technical details are certainly important, but sometimes you need to understand them in a different way or communicate what you’re doing differently to people that aren’t as familiar with those technical details. And the 3DEXPERIENCE platform really lets us do that. It provides common ground between the design, the build and customer support, and adds another layer of efficiency and speed to what we’re doing.” 

The platform provides a virtual testbed for not only Otto’s aircraft but its entire operations. It can test new ideas, verify designs and optimize factory layouts. This capability will prove invaluable as the company moves from its conceptual design stage to product development. 

“We have virtual twins and digital mock-ups of the aircraft, and we are modeling our factory and our operational space for when we deliver the aircraft,” Drennan said. “The digital thread we have created using virtual twins across the product development life cycle enables us to think in the virtual world before committing resources to physical production.”

As the company grows, it expects to leverage even more virtual twin capabilities. In fact, it wants to build a virtual twin at every stage of development. “We’d like to create an as-designed twin, an as-built twin, an as-operated twin and an as-maintained twin. We believe it gives our engineers the best knowledge about what they’ve done and the best knowledge about what they want to do in the future,” Drennan said. “It helps us create a product that’s very true, but our most important asset and output from that interaction is our knowledge.” 

Otto’s immediate priority is to create a deliverable product. And, with Dassault Systèmes by its side, that future will come sooner rather than later. “All the great support that Dassault Systèmes offers to us, as well as the advancement of their solutions, is really important in ensuring the success of our virtual twin, and then the maturation of our offering,” Drennan said. “Our deep collaboration will help us see our vision through to the end.” 

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