Breaking the Barriers to Innovation

At each milestone in aviation history, engineers, daring aviators and astronauts have found ways to break the bounds of Earth’s gravity. The Montgolfier Brothers developed the first balloons in 1783. The Wright Brothers recorded the first powered flight in 1903. Yuri Gagarin was the first human to orbit the Earth in 1961, as part of Russia’s Vostok program. And NASA’s Apollo program saw US astronaut Neil Armstrong taking the first step on the moon in 1969. These pioneers of aerospace boldly led the world into new frontiers of flight.

Aerospace & Defense organizations today face increased competition and demand for new technology to make the world safer and easier to travel in a sustainable way. To deliver, the industry is continually reshaping itself, building on its long history and culture of innovation.

New Space

The entrepreneurial space age — New Space — is expanding more rapidly than ever and it’s no longer the purview of governments. Soon it will deliver better communications networks for all, as well as the ultimate in adventure travel – space tourism. In the longer run, it will lead to a permanent, habitable moon base; possibly some mineral exploitation; and almost certainly a scientific colony on Mars — and that’s only a partial list. More importantly, it’s commercial enterprises that will be in the vanguard.

New start-ups are embracing innovative enabling technologies like Additive Manufacturing, 3D printing and multi-scale, multi-physics simulation to engineer reusable rocketry that will dramatically change all previous conventions.

Sustainable Aviation

Across the Aerospace & Defense industry, environmental priorities are closely linked to key business goals such as efficiency, profitability and regulatory compliance. That provides a powerful impetus for continuous innovation as companies look for new ways to reduce waste, energy consumption and emissions, increase efficiency and lower operating and maintenance costs. For example, as part of its mission to achieve zero emission flights by 2035, Airbus is checking off key milestones on the path to achieving hydrogen-powered flight. Both key players and start-ups are leveraging virtual prototypes to refine and test their innovations and minimize waste, before committing valuable resources and materials.

Advanced Air Mobility

With the Advanced air mobility (AAM) market expected to reach $ 150B Market by 2035, the AAM ecosystem is now facing increasing competition. Joby Aviation, Beyond Aero, Raphe, Dronamics and the other hundreds of start-ups must find the right tools to efficiently deliver new sustainable air mobility innovations while minimizing IT-related expenses. Start-ups are building a virtual twin experience of their eVTOL, drone, hybrid and hydrogen powered aircraft, to handle everything from initial analysis and 3D design modeling all the way through defining requirements, gaining certification and enabling manufacturing.

More than ever, companies must work seamlessly across time zones, languages and organizations to deliver new innovations to market. As companies evolve to work more collaboratively instead of operating in functional, organizational or geographic silos, an integrated platform is required to bring together an entire program – including program management, engineering, testing, manufacturing and operations. By moving beyond Product Data Management (PDM) or Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems – to an enterprise-wide innovation platform – all functions can collaborate in near real-time to build a program from concept to take-off.

The 3DEXPERIENCE® platform on the cloud enables autonomous aircraft producer XSun to design and consolidate all its data on a single location, to keep a unique, clear and clean configuration of all the subsystems. The cloud gives XSun exceptional agility: all employees can access the platform simultaneously and continuously interact and monitor the overall balance of the aircraft at each change – regardless of the domain they work in or the application they use.

Seamless digital collaboration on one platform enables rapid acceleration of new programs from concept to takeoff while significantly cutting development costs.

At the program level, a model-based enterprise (MBE) approach including model-based systems engineering (MBSE) creates the foundation for companies to explore the best configurations to meet customer requirements.

Moving the enterprise business view to the engineering/systems view, MBSE leverages a functional system digital mock-up (S-DMU) to replicate the physical asset, processes and systems. This “digital thread” assembles all of the parts, sub-systems and system designs into a single virtual model. Companies like Lockheed Martin use MBSE to manage and simplify product complexity in development. Among other benefits, this “systems of systems” approach can simplify engineering complexities between mechanical, electrical, software and other components using a standard language.

In addition to MBE and MBSE, co-simulation can help optimize design by assessing thousands of concepts and finding the configurations that best meet the entire list of requirements in weeks versus months, while avoiding potential issues.

Increasing the use of virtual simulation to replace some physical testing enables engineers to have feedback on design earlier and faster in the development program. Improved testing eliminates unplanned testing costs and delays while identifying potential flaws or failures which could incur significant program delays, cost overruns and business impact. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform accelerates the design process, reduces program risk and contributes to improving the design’s performance and process safety thanks to a large set of connected virtual testing means and digitized processes.

Competition, unexpected events and consumer demand put relentless pressure on manufacturers.

The future of manufacturing is based on the concept of the smart factory, which interconnects machinery and systems on the factory floor, but also outside to clients, partners and other production sites. It’s not just digitalized manufacturing. Instead, it is digitalized manufacturing informed by new ways of inventing, learning, producing and trading that are shaking all sectors of the economy and society. A critical aspect of every digitalization strategy is the move to using virtual process planning that allows aerospace companies to increase productivity, reduce overall cost, improve product quality and accelerate time-to-market.

Companies like Latécoère use the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to model their factory virtually, so they can simulate how new innovations will be produced and foresee potential issues before they occur. This virtual model helps manufacturing teams determine how to best orchestrate and balance production flow before product starts.