Virtual Performance Solution for Aeronautics & Aerospace
Aeronautics and aerospace manufacturers are early adopters of Virtual Prototyping. For these industries, testing designs early on offers significant benefits such as being able to detect flaws or even failures in the operation of complex systems before it’s too late. Improving aircraft and spacecraft reliability enables manufacturers to avoid cost overruns – and protects them from any impact these may have on the safety of their equipment, or on their brand.
Thanks to ESI Virtual Performance Solution (VPS), aeronautic and aerospace OEMs deploy simulation-driven design and take full advantage of new technologies and new materials, such as composites.
Bird Strike & Ice impact
Bird strike is a significant threat to flight safety and has caused a number of accidents throughout history – with human casualties. Such accidents happen most often during takeoff, landing or during low altitude flights.
With ESI Virtual Performance Solution (VPS), engineers are able to simulate turbine engine blade containment by means of predictive material models (like elastoplastic shells and solids with EWK* damage and failure). In addition, they can also initialize the centrifugal blade pre-stressing and take into account stressed structure to compute bird strike or ice impact.
* The ESI‐Wilkins‐Kamoulakos (EWK) Rupture Model
Composite Structures
Recent years have seen outstanding advances in the use of composite materials, but the lightweight advantage of such materials is reduced because of additional design safety margins. The only way of reducing the safety margin is to increase the accuracy of the performance simulation delivered by Virtual Performance Solution (VPS), by taking into account the manufacturing of composite . See how VPS contributes to lightweight design, and read the related published technical papers.
Aircraft Ditching
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Seaplanes, flying boats, and amphibious aircrafts are designed to take off and land on water. Landing can be supported by a hull-shaped fuselage and/or pontoons.
Aircraft ditching is landing on a body of water. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) does not require commercial pilots to train for ditching, but it is required that the airline cabin remain on the water long enough to allow for the evacuation process.
With ESI Virtual Performance Solution, aircraft engineers can evaluate their design to ensure optimal behavior of the aircraft during ditching, accounting for various situations. See more about the new water flow module.
Space Debris Shielding
- Measure the response of matter under extreme strain rates and pressures
- Use a range of suitable material models and equations of state describing the full range of the thermodynamic processes
- Strengthen an effective protection for satellites and space modules against arbitrary impacts with orbiting space debris
- Simulate the oblique impacts upon whipple and double bumper metallic and non-metallic spacecraft shields with meshless methods
Spacecraft Pyrotechnic Separation
- Use a range of suitable material models and equations of state that describe the full range of the pyrotechnic separation process
- Simulate the detonation process, rocket fairing rupture and associated shock propagation to the upper-stage payload section
Satellite Payload Shock Response and Safety
- Simulate the high-frequency vibration response due to a short duration pulse, which typically affects satellite payload or vehicle equipment bay after the pyrotechnic cutting used to separate modules in spacecraft or rockets
Crash Landing / Splashdown of Fixed and Rotary Wing Aircraft
- Benefit from design methodologies for aircraft crash survivability developed through several European research projects (simulation techniques for both metallic and composite structures)
- Simulate aircraft crash landing on hard or soft soil and helicopter splashdown
