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Described as “the dawn of a new era in commercial and military jet engine design” in a GE announcement this week (19 May), the project was completed by a team of AI researchers at the GE Aerospace Research Center in New York state using a new generative AI-powered app.
While such a swift design process might raise questions – and eyebrows – over a future engine’s suitability for flight, the preliminary design reportedly “satisfied all requirements”.
“With the US Department of Defense prioritising the speed of new developments, and the commercial aviation industry’s focus on meeting air travel demand, the pace of innovation is quickening,” the announcement said.
Generative AI tools “can significantly reduce design cycle times, enabling us to be faster to test and ultimately faster to commercialise the best, most proven end product,” said Joe Vinciquerra, general manager and senior executive director at GE Aerospace Research. “GE Aerospace is all in on AI.”
GE Aerospace researchers are also using their app to to accelerate the development of commercial jet engine technologies, the announcement said, enabling them to explore technologies such as open fan architecture for next-generation narrowbody engines.
In the ramjet project, researchers simultaneously accounted for multiple flight conditions and scenarios that a customer might typically outline. “Using GE Aerospace’s generative AI app allows engineers to reduce this early design study work from weeks and months to seconds in a day to arrive at a similar result,” the announcement said.
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