13 June 2008
Innovation

The Airbus-led CFMS Core Programme – a jointly-funded collaboration with the U.K. government and industry partners – will develop advanced computer-based systems and processes to enhance the future design of aircraft and other applications, including ships and racing cars.

This research effort will evolve innovative computer-based simulation systems to increase the power of fluid mechanics design processes by up to 1 million times by 2012, leading to significantly reduced product development lead times and enhanced product optimisation.

By 2012, the time required for some elements in the commercial aircraft aerodynamic design process – such as data definition for use in the loads analysis process – may be reduced from 350 days to just 36 days by replacing the current physical wind tunnel testing-based methods with high fidelity, computer-based simulation.

In such cases, the time-consuming process of model manufacture and testing will be replaced by enhanced, sophisticated numerical simulation methods that are able to generate and manipulate data significantly faster than any of the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods available today.

These more efficient and powerful design processes will also enable the development of further ecological improvements, as more effort can be focused on the development of environmentally-friendly products – including the adoption of novel technologies, and possibly new airframe configurations.

In addition, these new technologies will reduce energy consumption and waste in the design process itself allowing for fewer physical test models, lower test facility costs, reduced flight test hours and less rework in the early stages of product manufacture.

The CFMS Core Programme recently started as a pilot in the U.K., and is due to run for three years. In the future, it is expected this programme will be extended to complementary research efforts in other European countries.