The aerodynamic, structural, and system choices of today define the aircraft performance of tomorrow and can make or break the aircraft program's 10 to 40 year future. An integrated digitalization strategy accelerates aircraft programs and reduces engineering risk to achieve better designs faster, thus eliminating costly issues later in design cycle. 

Technological breakthroughs foster nearly limitless innovation in aerospace and defense. However, while companies are focused on reducing budgets and cycle times, these innovations have increased product complexity, multiplying the time and cost to achieve certification. To be innovative and reduce costs and cycle times, certification and compliance requirements must be met and verified during every step of development within all functional areas. This is accomplished by connecting data silos with a single digital thread.

It is no secret that manufacturing challenges in the aerospace industry are growing. Advanced materials, such as composites, and advanced technologies, such as additive manufacturing, are driving up manufacturing complexity. Automated processes are replacing labor-intensive applications on the shop floor, and this is increasing the need for specialized tools. Our manufacturing solution offers a comprehensive set of fully integrated tools for part manufacturing, including CAD/CAM, robotics, CNC machining, CMM inspection, and 3D printing.

Aerospace and defense tooling is complex and demanding, and plays a critical role in the finished product, affecting quality and manufacturing repeatability. Tooling design requires a deep understanding of the conditions faced during production. Our integrated design and manufacturing solution offer a comprehensive set of fully integrated tools for the entire tool and fixture design and manufacturing process, including design, simulation, CNC, CMM inspection and 3D printing.

Managing material data and integrating it with the product lifecycle is critical to the development of complex and innovative products. Our solution maintains a tight integration between materials considered for use in aerospace products and the product bill-of-materials (BOM) which is crucial to delivering successful, innovative, and compliant products.

Achieving performance requirements for emissions, noise, energy efficiency, safety, reliability in complex aircraft engine systems requires a platform that provides an integrated view of a large set of disciplines. By uniquely combining robust design space exploration, scalable multi-physics, dynamics and CFD capabilities, industry-leading physical testing and experienced engineering services, Siemens Digital Industry Software portfolio delivers engineering insight on all levels.

Aerodynamic performance engineering affects not just the airframe but a multitude of other aircraft systems. The design and performance of systems including propulsion, environmental controls, landing gears, ice protection, and avionics depend on optimal aerodynamic performance. Simcenter solutions offer accurate, multi-disciplinary simulations, testing, and automated design space exploration, helping engineers discover better aerodynamic designs, faster.

Engineering the thermal balance of a modern aircraft is challenging. Electrification, innovative designs and lighter materials warrant increased heat rejection while ensuring system safety and passenger comfort. Our solution portfolio offers a cohesive virtual thermal management analysis by optimizing thermal loading and passenger comfort, front-loading system and equipment integration and enabling thermal trade-off analysis early in the design. This combined systems engineering, modeling and simulation, test and verification is the key to engineering aircraft thermal innovation.

The structural complexity of modern aircraft has increased the structural analysis demand and the need to improve traceability and global analysis workflow which can have a major impact on reducing non-recurring program costs from structural design.

Boost the performance of aircraft systems. Avoid costly troubleshooting by addressing the complexity of aircraft systems and assessing system interactions during early design phases. To help you reduce development costs and increase overall program delivery efficiency, we offer you a powerful suite of system simulation and CAE solutions that enable you to build scalable digital twins of aircraft systems.

Streamline aircraft integration and avoid costly program delays. Aircraft integrators face complex integration challenges to confirm that performance targets are met and certify design airworthiness. By combining virtual and physical testing, we offer a unique platform to predict and confirm the aircraft behavior in flight operation. Our solutions are backed up by years of engineering experience, designed to answer modern aircraft integration challenges.

Today’s aerospace and defense programs must deliver products that meet all technical and performance requirements at cost and on schedule while often utilizing globally distributed suppliers and partners. These suppliers and partners might be using a diverse set of engineering applications. Our solution provides digital mockup and visualization of multi-CAD assemblies so that everyone can access and collaborate with design and process data to make informed decisions.

Aerospace and defense companies face increased product complexity, greater customization, and competitive disruption on a global basis. These challenges cannot be addressed by document-based and other inefficient methods still employed by many companies. It is imperative that companies conform to agile engineering and design thinking and processes. Our open multi-discipline, scalable and standards-based solution provides all the necessary tools for agile aerospace product development.

Aerospace and defense companies are being asked to reduce the support and operating cost of their products. Given the long lifespans of these products, maintenance is a big contributor to their overall cost and as a result, improving reliability and minimizing maintenance-related downtime have become critical. By using product knowledge taken from design and simulation, our service planning and management solution makes it possible to develop, validate, and document service requirements and service plans prior to equipment delivery.

Whether pioneering new propulsion systems or entering the urban air mobility market, aerospace companies must become more innovative to take these new products to market within budget and faster than the competition. The intelligent manufacturing digital thread solution enables companies to create the factory of the future today by harnessing the most advanced tools and technologies to deliver better quality products faster while maintaining the flexibility to adapt to changes on the fly.

The electrical model-based development environment (MBE) provides the ability to quickly and accurately analyze the configuration controlled, electrical digital twin for compliance.

Our E/E systems development solutions provide a model-based approach, employing digital data continuity, spanning the full electrical value chain: from the definition of a platform's electrical system, through its design, certification and manufacture, and beyond to support its utilization life cycle.

Orchestrate your technical program by using modeling to define product architecture and requirements, explore design space, test virtually, design interfaces from the product architecture, manage integrations and finally verify the product fulfills the requirements.

Motivated by performance and sustainability demands, aerospace and defense companies are exploring new designs, composite materials, and alternative production methods. While new approaches lead to more innovative products in the marketplace, speed could suffer without the right tools and processes. By adding convergent modeling and topology optimization software to the process, development teams can rapidly generate designs and explore alternatives to bolster strength, reduce weight, or incorporate new materials and manufacturing methods.