von Karman Institute Lecture Series and Events

The aircraft engineering community is pushing aircraft engineers to envision new design concepts, system architectures and technologies. The resulting concepts are promising but aircraft become increasingly complex. A higher amount of dynamic interactions between subsystems and an exponential increase of control software often creates unforeseen integration problems. Also on the structural side, new materials respond to the ever present quest for lighter structures. And last but not least, airline passengers become more and more demanding with respect to comfort, safety, environmental footprints. Although everything one can think of is taken into account during the definition of aircraft programs, aircraft programs most of the time suffer major development delays, huge cost overruns. Indeed, one can roughly estimate that 1 year of delay on a major commercial aircraft program creates an unforeseen cash burn of 1b$/year.

In order to improve overall “program performance”, new development methods like “Model Based Systems Engineering” are needed. The presenter will illustrate with real examples how Simulation, Virtual Testing and Physical Testing technologies can help aircraft integrators and suppliers to develop sooner more mature & innovative aircraft.

“Fly it, before you Build it!”