2023-07-26 06:30:26
During the Paris Air Show, the subject of decarbonization of the aeronautical sector made the headlines. Illustration with the company Hexagon, which offers its customers digital solutions to improve, in particular, the design of the aircraft of tomorrow.
Hexagon is the market leader in digital reality solutions for businesses. The company, present in 51 countries around the world, thus offers its customers the possibility of making the best use of all the data generated by their activities, with the aim of improving processes, efficiency, productivity and quality.
Present at the Paris Air Show 2023, Hexagon presented the multiple solutions that allow their customers in the aeronautics sector to improve the performance of their aircraft, both in the operation of current aircraft and in the prototyping of tomorrow’s aircraft.
Aziz Tahiri, vice-president of aeronautics and defense for Hexagon, was present at the show and explained to Engineering Techniques how the digital solutions developed by the company, leader in its market, participate in the great challenge that is the carbon neutrality of the aviation sector by 2050.
Engineering Techniques: This 2023 edition of the Paris Air Show is placed under the sign of the decarbonization of the aviation sector. How do you approach this technological and ecological challenge?
Aziz Tahiri : The subject of carbon-free aviation is indeed very present at the show. If we consider that emissions related to air traffic are around 3% of total emissions, and that air traffic will double in the next twenty years, as announced by Airbus and Boeing, this means that the carbon footprint of the aviation sector will drop to 6%, if nothing is done by then to limit emissions.
All industries are changing today: the automobile with electric vehicles, agriculture… if the air sector does not change while the others do, the figure of 6% could easily rise to 10 or even 15% of the total emissions. Care must therefore be taken to ensure that emissions from the aviation sector do not increase proportionally. And for that, we must deploy innovations on a large scale so that aviation as a whole limits its emissions. Real efforts have already been made, they must be continued.
Aeronautics has a bad image that needs to be improved, which is also why the aeronautics industry must tackle head-on the reduction of GHG emissions.
Do you sense a greater orientation towards the development of more fuel-efficient aircraft among your customers?
The decarbonization of the aeronautics industry is a rapidly accelerating subject, which has become an objective for all players in the aeronautics sector. The sector also needs new programs to continue to grow and attract jobs. Decarbonization is in this sense an industrial and environmental opportunity to be seized, for the aviation sector as a whole.
Explain to us in concrete terms how Hexagon supports its clients on these decarbonization themes?
We address the decarbonization issues of the aviation sector from two angles. First of all, every flying object needs to be light: the lighter it is, the easier it flies, and the less GHG it emits. This is our first challenge: how to make aircraft as light as possible, to limit as much as possible the consumption of fuel – which emits GHGs – necessary to propel them? The AFP and ATL composite materials in particular offer performance that makes it possible to develop innovations on the weight and resistance of the structure.
The second big subject is the new generation of engines. Current engines run essentially on kerosene, and over the past 30 years their kerosene consumption has been halved, which is already considerable. These improvements must be pursued through the use of “SAF” biofuels, which make it possible to achieve carbon neutrality; then think about a real “net zero” zero carbon solution that is more sustainable on a large scale, such as hydrogen.
We work a lot on aircraft architecture: delta wing, wings curved on themselves… We have to explore new aerodynamic structures and new materials to go further on the aerodynamic performance and the weight of the aircraft.
On composite materials, for example, we use our laser scanners. Once a fuselage is assembled on a production line, we will scan the surfaces of the material to detect shocks, impurities, fiber gaps.
We then operate with result analysis software to detect and qualify defects in the material and the manufacturing process.
Are these tools used today for aircraft maintenance during their operating cycles?
Today the inspection of aircraft between two flights is still done visually. These visual inspections, sometimes accompanied by a drone, make it possible to identify defects. We will then intervene to characterize this defect, locate it, and decide on the aircraft’s ability to fly, and ultimately the reasonable time in which to deal with the detected structural defect.
What about the simulation component?
We do structural simulation. We are the world leader in the mechanical structural calculation market, with MSC software NASTRAN, which is now a reference. 90% of the aircraft flying in the world today deal with Hexagon design, production or metrology systems at one time or another.
We also do acoustic and fluid simulation. As well as the simulation of manufacturing, machining, forming, welding processes, etc.
So we simulate all physics and manufacturing processes, except molding.
All these numerical simulations will make it possible to develop an aircraft concept, on the static and dynamic structural aspect, the material aspect, on the micro and macro structural scale…
Our process simulation tools, for fiber assembly and draping, also enable simulation at the heart of the material. Finally, the simulation of machining, bending, drilling/riveting or even 3D printing… all these possibilities allow our customers to prototype the aircraft in a very advanced way, in order to test all the design parameters but especially to simulate the manufacturing before the certification of the device. This is to anticipate manufacturability issues, anticipate production defects and align the design with the human and material resources of our customers.
How do the simulation and quality control tools you develop complement each other?
With quality control, we move into reality. It is on this point that Hexagon stands out, with this ability to be both effective in simulation in the virtual world and in quality control in the real world. The goal is to verify that the difference between the intentions and the actual rendering is as small as possible. This is an important request from our customers.
It is this ability to simulate both the static operation of the aircraft and the manufacturing processes that will allow new aircraft to be developed more and more quickly. Indeed, if simulation has been used for a long time in aeronautics, the challenges for this technology today are to produce fewer prototypes, in order to achieve, in one go, a reliable prototype that meets expectations. It is therefore a question of reducing design times by 30 to 50% and avoiding the astronomical cost linked to multiple physical prototyping.
What are the persistent brakes in simulation?
It should be known that the knot, in simulation, resides in the calculation times. These are very energy-intensive and time-consuming. Artificial intelligence now offers us the possibility of considerably limiting calculation times, and of obtaining simulations in a few hours that previously had to be left running for several days before obtaining the slightest result.
Beyond that, simulation is becoming more and more democratized, after having long been an area of expertise. Today, Hexagon multiphysics software is much more intuitive. It is possible to train an expert very quickly, and they can, thanks to a platform that we are developing – NEXUS – collaborate on the same 3D simulation model, simultaneously in real time, and visualize the impact of the different simulations on the system under study: it’s unique! This represents a considerable time saving in the design phase and makes it possible to interest new generations of engineers in the magnificent digital and environmental challenges of aeronautics.
Interview by Pierre Thouverez
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