Designing the optimal airframe

Integration of simulation software tools is the key, from aerodynamic CAE to structural analysis and optimization.

“Competitive airframe design today is pretty much impossible without the use of computers,” said Marc Halpern to Aerospace Engineering (AE). He is a Research Vice President at Gartner Inc. with a long history of experience, specializing in understanding the use of CAE across a wide spectrum of industries. A number of factors make air-framers leading users of CAE, especially for structural analysis simulation. For one, using CAE significantly reduces the amount of physical testing, important where a company builds at most a few hundred, complex, multimillion dollar vehicles a year. Testing to failure an entire vehicle is simply cost-prohibitive.

Airframe engineers have always built the highest fidelity CAE models, and with the almost exponential growth of computing power, will continue to do so. “Airframe structural models have a staggering number of degrees-of-freedom,” he said. “They use these high-fidelity models to proactively guide a significant percentage of an airframe design.” High-fidelity models with complex load cases require advanced Simulation Data Management, an area that various PLM vendors have produced recently and will continue to expand, according to Halpern.