Session Category: HUB AVIATION 2023

Discover examples and scenarios that can boost your impact on the aerospace community.

For over 20 years, General Atomics-Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI) has been developing and refining the Automatic Takeoff and Landing Capability (ATLC) used across its fleet of UAVs. Originally demonstrated in 2002, ATLC has since been integrated into nearly all the 27+ aircraft variants that GA-ASI produces. Today, this system is used in broad applications to reduce pilot workload, improve safety of operations, enable operations in inclement weather, and more. This presentation will review the history of ATLC, introduce the fundamental design components of the system, and share a few highlights of what’s in store for ATLC in the future.

An illustrative discussion of the Hardware-in-the-Loop framework designed for turbine engine simulations based on commonly known industry requirements. The framework allows formal system level verification testing of gas turbine engine control systems, supports multiple engine applications, and can simulate multi-engine configurations using deterministic real-time solutions.

Leaders from Airbus, Boeing, and GE Aviation continue their discussion begun at the 2022 AIAA AVIATION Forum around driving change in the aviation industry around sustainability.

Aircraft manufacturers have long learned to take advantage of common components within design variants. For example, a typical airplane would have several design variants sharing the same wing, empennage and cockpit while having different lengths of fuselage. Significant cost savings can be achieved by reusing common components in aircraft and spacecraft assemblies.

The finite element analysis world, however, has not been able to fully leverage common components in assembly models. Components are typically organized as “include files” in an assembly model. But due to the strict requirement of unique FE entity IDs, these common component models cannot be easily reused. In order to be reused, a component model typically needs to be renumbered, repositioned, or reoriented. This process is not only time-consuming, but also prone to error.

In addition, a component model may appear in many design variants with thousands of load cases. It is not a trivial task to envelope and max/min search the loads associated with a component. Careful and tedious bookkeeping is required to keep track of which design variant and what loading event generated the critical component design loads.

This presentation will introduce an efficient assembly modelling method – the MSC Nastran Modules. This method eliminates the need for unique FE entity ID numbering, automates component connections, allows easy instancing (translate, mirror, and rotate) of components and generates modular results to streamline the enveloping and max/min search of loads. Real-world examples of a UVA drone, offshore wind turbine platform, and a truck frame assembly will be used to demonstrate the workflow and benefits of Modules.

Experts from Rescale invite you to join us to uncover the transformative power of cloud-based
engineering in Aerospace! Learn how industry leaders like Boom Supersonic and Vertical Aerospace are
optimizing design and performance through multi-disciplinary optimization and surrogate models.
Discover the cutting-edge cloud hardware technology teams are using to analyze applications like wing
structural strength, turbine flow, antenna placement, and lightning strikes, and more. And, see how to run
simulations faster in the cloud using Helios, Star-CCM+, and OpenFOAM to drive new breakthroughs.