Hint: Your first-guess technology is not on the list.
Hexagon has sponsored this post.
As global markets trend towards sustainable, net-zero economies, aviation finds itself at a crossroads. For decades, airplane geometries have converged. They all contain a large, pressurized tube; massive, petrol-filled wings and a half-dozen-or-so jet — maybe propeller — engines. Interiors have new creature comforts, space saving methodologies and lighter materials, but for generations development has stagnated. Aziz Tahiri, vice president of Global Industries Aerospace & Defense at Hexagon, argues that for the industry to align with sustainability trends, everything must change.
“You have to review everything in an aircraft to be sustainable,” says Tahiri. “Almost everything was designed 40 years ago. You need to reconsider all these systems. This is hard because of the economics and financial systems attached to it. You need to almost reinvent everything, and new product introduction costs a lot of money.”
The obvious first step is to change aircraft power systems. Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), hybrid and electric systems, green hydrogen fuel cell systems are leading candidates, but which should be selected and how will this selection affect aircraft geometry? Designing, testing and manufacturing the prototypes to answer these questions — while maintaining best practices — will get expensive and time consuming.
“We need to rethink the aircraft without spending ten years to design a new aircraft,” explains Tahiri. “To spend $12 billion to design an aircraft; you need to produce thousands over ten years to break even. We need to reduce the design cycle time to test new materials, fuel and designs to get a new aircraft in six years and maybe $6 billion.”
So, what technologies will make the aircraft industry sustainable: new fuels, batteries, fuel cells? One, or a combination, will inevitably come out on top. But it will be new technologies for high fidelity 3D simulation, traceability and advanced manufacturing that get us there.
How high fidelity 3Dsimulation can make flying green
Simulation technology is by no means new to the aerospace industry. For decades it has been used to validate the structural integrity of components, aerodynamics strategies, test new materials and assess propulsion strategies. What has changed is its accuracy and time to results; this should change how it’s used.
“Yesterday you could not avoid prototyping several times — even up to 3-6 prototypes — and the engineering teams were using simulation to test and validate them more extensively. Today with efficient large model processing, it’s much easier to iterate with an accurate 3D or system model in the virtual world. So maybe you only need to prototype once to find out if what you make works as designed,” says Tahiri. “That is what we do at Hexagon. We have simulations so close to reality and physical testing we can avoid multiple physical tests and iterations.”
The idea is to reduce design cycle times by replacing the use of physical prototypes with digital alternatives and using them extensively earlier in the design phase. This saves a lot of money and time, as building prototypes as large and complex as an aircraft isn’t easy.
Tahiri explains that this iterative process is becoming even faster thanks to the use of artificial intelligence (AI). The use of AI can significantly reduce the computational time needed to get results. Additionally, AI can be used to suggest iterations to a design, helping engineers zero-in on optimal geometries faster than before.
Using modern simulation and AI, Tahiri suggests engineers start testing:
- Aircraft architectures like delta wings, blended wing bodies and adjustable wingtips.
- Biomimicry to see how bird and insect flight might influence and optimize aerodynamics.
- The performance of materials like composites, and components made via additive manufacturing.
- Propulsion and storage strategies for hydrogen, batteries and fuel cells.
How 3D model traceability tools bring sustainability to aviation
Like simulation, traceability is not new to the aviation industry. Since aviation’s inception, documentation has helped design, certify and justify aircraft designs. What has changed is that traceability is no longer a manual endeavor — almost everything can be digitalized efficiently and accurately.
“You once had an army of inspectors to check everything is signed off and manufactured right,” said Tahiri. “Now we are using automated inspection capabilities with laser scanners that digitally send measurements to certification systems. These scanners can ensure traceability all along the product lifecycle. Instead of having a huge amount of paper for inspection reports, you now have a digital report that correlates to a 3D measurement cloud that can be meshed into a CAD model.”
The detailed 3D measurements add a critical “source of truth” to the digital twin and ensures all stakeholders collaborate on the same data throughout the product lifecycle. For instance, simulation experts can take the measurements from the manufacturing team to ensure a plane, as built, meets sustainability requirements. These geometries can also be used to help process development teams make the manufacturing processes more sustainable — by reducing scrap, for example.
How manufacturing must change to make aerospace sustainable
Since development teams can iterate on a design to reduce scrap, it stands to reason they can iterate on designs to ensure manufacturability — or better still, optimise it virtually before any CAPEX is committed. “Before you certify a new design, you need to make sure it is manufacturable,” Tahiri confirms. “This usually happens after the design of the aircraft. However, we can now simulate the manufacturing processes before a design is signed off and certified.”
This means that — well before any assembling, drilling or fastening — development teams can assess if a design can be manufactured and if said manufacturing process meets sustainability goals. “If you engineer something but you can’t manufacture it, or it takes re-engineering every time you do, the ROI is ten years instead of five and the engineering fails,” says Tahiri. “Well-engineered products can be manufactured, and the processes are optimized for quality, cost, sustainability and time to market.”
Hexagon is a trusted partner that works with 90% of the aerospace and defense industry. It enables industry experts to achieve their sustainability goals and overcome their challenges and deliver quality at any stage of the product life cycle. To learn more about how Hexagon enables sustainable aviation, click here and read the white paper.
