Future aircraft will need to be climate-neutral during operation, while being manufactured in a sustainable and energy-efficient manner. At ILA 2022, the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Dassault Systèmes with the goal of strengthening their cooperation in the area of digital development processes, and to accelerate the development and manufacturing processes of climate-neutral aircraft based on this. Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform offers integrated design, engineering and simulation applications in a cloud-based collaborative solution to drive the transformation of aviation. DLR, with its 55 research institutes, is researching technologies and simulation tools for sustainable and climate-neutral air transport, from flight physics to production and operations.
In practical terms, for example, the innovation platform of Dassault Systèmes is to be used in the DLR project D-Light at the Innovation Center for Small Aircraft Technologies in Aachen for the design of an aircraft with nine seats and a hydrogen/fuel cell propulsion system. The goal is to create a digital mock-up of such an aircraft. During this process, researchers will test how the industrial software can make digitalised aeronautics research and development at DLR more efficient and how the introduction of new technologies, such as hydrogen as an aviation fuel, can be simplified and accelerated. Dassault Systèmes wants to leverage DLR’s experience in using the software in a research environment to identify possibilities for enhancement.
The DLR Institute of System Architectures in Aeronautics and the Dassault Systèmes Innovation Center are already jointly located at the Center of Applied Aeronautical Research (Zentrum für Angewandte Luftfahrtforschung; ZAL) in Hamburg. Both partners have already been able to harness initial synergies in the field of aircraft assembly and Industry 4.0 in previous projects. Future collaborations will build on these successes to establish a testbed based on the newly founded Engineering Collaboration Network (ECN) in the field of sustainable aviation.
Dassault Systèmes and DLR sign the Memorandum of Understanding (from left to right): Dominic Kurtaz, Managing Director Eurocentral at Dassault Systèmes, Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla, Chair of the DLR Executive Board and Markus Fischer, DLR Divisional Board Member for Aeronautics.