Engineering news
Airbus Group is extending its use of engineering software company Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform to its additive manufacturing programs, integrating design, simulation and production.
Airbus Group will deploy Dassault Systèmes’ collaborative design and simulation applications as part of its “Co-Design to Target” offering, for the additive manufacturing of tooling, prototyping and parts for test flights and for production use on commercial aircraft.
The “Co-Design to Target” solution uses applications for additive manufacturing to offer flexibility in part design, production and testing. Airbus said this will help reduce waste and costs associated with the manufacturing of complex aircraft parts, without sacrificing strength or performance.
Robert Nardini, senior vice-president engineering airframe at Airbus, said: “Numerous projects across Airbus are accelerating the use of additive manufacturing to produce prototypes, as well as production components potentially delivering lighter and less expensive parts that meet technological, performance, safety and cost standards.
“Airbus has long used Dassault Systèmes’ simulation applications to accelerate the structural analysis and virtual testing of aircraft and now we can define a new way of designing parts by leveraging simulation-based design to better answer aviation market needs.”
Dominique Florack, senior executive vice-president of research and development at Dassault Systèmes, added: “Additive manufacturing creates new opportunities in many different areas such as remote fabrication for support and maintenance, rapid prototyping for realising new concepts and experiences and, perhaps most importantly, developing designs that were heretofore impossible to fabricate.
“With this approach, Airbus Group will be able to take advantage of the platform’s next generation automated design assistant for parts, whether they are 3D printed or not, thus accelerating a new wave of transformation in the aerospace industry. With the 3DEXPERIENCE platform we are delivering an end to end solution including all engineering parameters for the additive manufacturing of parts inclusive of material science, functional specification, generative design, 3D printing optimisation, production and certification,” he added.