Designing the Next Generation of Aircraft with Simulation

The aerospace industry is the one who is building the most complex machines on Earth. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner, for example, is made of more than 2 million parts that must be designed, tested, assembled and maintained to match the very strong safety and reliability aviation standard. An engine is made of 40,000 parts that are overhauled and replaced every few thousand hours of flight. It is not a surprise that, having to deal with such a complexity, this industry was, together with the automotive one, among the first using the power of numerical simulation. This article is a summary of the opening I’ve made for the workshop “Flexible Engineering Toward Green Aircraft” (December 14, 2017—University of Rome “Tor Vergata”) and is based on the observations I’ve made on how simulation is used while playing my role of aerospace industry director for ANSYS, visiting universities, research centres and customers all over the world.