Computer simulation that could reduce handling quality assessments for a new commercial aircraft from 350 days to 36 is the focus of a three-year, £17.4 million ($34 million) UK research programme.
With £8.4 million from the UK government's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the remainder from an industrial consortium, the goal of the Centre for Fluid Mechanics and Simulation's Core programme is to improve the capability of computational fluid-dynamics simulation by many orders of magnitude.
This should enable industry to reduce the time products take to move from concept stage to market, by replacing hardware testing with virtual analysis. "One of our projects is an integration project for dissemination and exploitation of this technology in aerospace and other industries," says Simon Rees, civil aviation business manager for systems engineering consultancy and consortium member Frazer-Nash.
The consortium will continue after the Core programme ends, and Rees expects it to apply for European Union Seventh Framework research funding.
With £8.4 million from the UK government's Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the remainder from an industrial consortium, the goal of the Centre for Fluid Mechanics and Simulation's Core programme is to improve the capability of computational fluid-dynamics simulation by many orders of magnitude.
This should enable industry to reduce the time products take to move from concept stage to market, by replacing hardware testing with virtual analysis. "One of our projects is an integration project for dissemination and exploitation of this technology in aerospace and other industries," says Simon Rees, civil aviation business manager for systems engineering consultancy and consortium member Frazer-Nash.
The consortium will continue after the Core programme ends, and Rees expects it to apply for European Union Seventh Framework research funding.
Source: Flight International
