by Joy Finnegan | Feb 1, 2023 | Innovation
An emblematic project consists of using a hydrogen fuel cell power source to generate sufficient electrical power, in the range of 400 kW, to feed all the non-propulsion systems of next-generation aircraft. Liebherr-Aerospace Toulouse is developing this power generation system as part of the France Relance (France Relaunch) plan with the support of the French Civil Aviation Authority (Direction Générale de l’Aviation Civile).
In order to test and assess this solution in a representative environment, Liebherr, supported by the Région Occitanie, recently installed a hydrogen test bench in its test center at its Toulouse site.
This new investment in test facilities will enable Liebherr-Aerospace Toulouse to demonstrate the ability to generate electrical power, using fuel cells, to supply the major non-propulsive electrical systems of a new generation single-aisle aircraft, while ensuring the thermal management of the whole (fuel cells and electrical systems).
In addition to these substantial investments in hydrogen, Liebherr-Aerospace Toulouse is also developing new systems and equipment with lower emissions, particularly of CO2, and is working with the wider aeronautical industry and other academic institutions to step up development of the systems and equipment needed for the next generation of zero-emission aircraft.
by Joy Finnegan | Feb 1, 2023 | Flight Ops IT, Innovation
Faced with increased disruptions, baggage mountains, and staff shortages, airports and airlines are ramping up their investment in technology to digitalize their operations and speed up the passenger journey by offering more self-service options.
SITA’s 2022 Air Transport IT Insights report, published today, reveals that with the post-pandemic recovery CIOs want to ensure operations are as agile and resilient as they are efficient, with IT solutions seen as central to their success. This has spurred an acceleration of digitalization, with airlines and airports looking to key technology solutions to fortify their operations against disruption while automating the passenger experience.
The industry’s IT spend is projected to continue its steady year-on-year growth trend since 2020 to support this push for digitalization, with a full 96% of airlines and 93% of airports expecting their IT spend to stay the same or increase in 2023 compared to 2022. Last year airline and airport IT spend rose to an estimated $37 billion and $6.8 billion respectively.
“Air travel has recovered faster from the pandemic than anyone in the industry had initially expected, particularly in Europe and the U. S.” David Lavorel, CEO, SITA, said. “While the recovery is welcome, airports and airlines have found themselves on the back foot with staff and resource shortages. This has put strain on operations, resulting in an increased risk of congestion, delays, cancellations and mishandled baggage. Digitalization is seen as key to addressing these challenges, providing more scalability and flexibility.”
Digitalizing operations to achieve more with less
Airlines are placing great emphasis on IT tools to manage irregular operations and provide the best passenger experience possible even amid staff shortages. Over the next three years, 90% or more of airlines are investing in IT service management enhancement and disruption warning systems, as well as business intelligence initiatives for aircraft turnaround management, passenger processing, and baggage processing.
Business intelligence solutions are at the forefront of airport IT investment priorities too, with 93% or more planning business intelligence initiatives for asset management and flight operations by 2025. The emphasis on agility, adaptability to disruption, and prompt communication with customers and stakeholders is clear; by 2025 half of airports are seeking to implement automated predictive alerts prior to flight disruption events as well as business intelligence initiatives to enable scaling of operations based on demand.
Streamlining the passenger journey with smart technologies
Both airlines and airports are investing in key technologies to smooth the passenger experience across every step of the journey, to help curb bottlenecks and in turn allow redistribution of key staff resource to focus on more complex tasks. Biometrics and self-service technologies are seeing major emphasis.
Airlines have identified self-service technologies as key to helping manage irregular operations, and this remained their top investment priority in 2022, with touchless solutions and biometric ID management following closely.
To support effective baggage management and empower passengers following a period of significant disruption, a majority of airlines plan to provide real-time baggage tracking information to passengers by 2025.
Airports are similarly prioritizing self-service initiatives, placing strong emphasis on self check-in and self-bag drop, with 86% planning implementation by 2025. Airports’ implementation of a secure single biometric token across all touchpoints has surged from just 3% in 2021 to 39% in 2022, with over half planning implementation over the next three years. This signals a strong commitment to the next-generation travel experience where passengers can breeze through the airport using their face as their boarding pass.
by Joy Finnegan | Feb 1, 2023 | Innovation
Siemens Digital Industries Software announced today that the latest release of Simcenter software for mechanical simulation helps streamline electrification engineering projects, assists new aircraft meet margins of safety, simplifies durability testing across many industries and much more.
“Addressing complex engineering challenges such as developing products that are more powerful, yet greener, lighter yet stronger requires a fully-integrated CAE solution,” said Jean-Claude Ercolanelli, senior vice president, Simulation and Test Solutions, Siemens Digital Industries Software. “The latest release of Simcenter offers a host of powerful enhancements to help engineers meet those challenges efficiently and significantly faster than ever before, whether that is getting tire contact simulations solved 45% quicker or reducing airframe structure preprocessing by up to 80%.
The highlights in this release are applicable across all industries and workflows and bring new functionality to the Simcenter family of products. Highlights include:
For those exploring Additive Manufacturing (AM), build process simulation is a must, particularly when dealing with metals-based powder-bed fusion production methods. The complex nature of these processes usually require the AM engineer to collaborate with an experienced CAE expert. The latest release of Siemens’ Simcenter 3D software introduces a simplified application for simulation of the powder-bed fusion (PBF) build process that is easy to use for engineers without in-depth CAE expertise. Using a robust voxel-based mesh in the background, it can quickly model and simulate the PBF build process, allowing engineers to gain a good understanding whether a part will build successfully. More detailed analysis can then be performed by CAE experts also using Simcenter 3D, thus enhancing collaboration.
Following on from the introduction of the ability to launch simulations on remote HPC systems directly from within Simcenter 3D, engineers now have the ability to review simulation results directly from the Remote Simulation interface. This helps engineers determine if simulation studies ran correctly before transferring large results files back to a local workstation for in-depth evaluation.
Electrification is a major trend across the Automotive industry and development of new Electric Vehicle (EV) powertrains tend to be broken into silos for e-motor design, transmission analysis, NVH and acoustics. Simcenter mechanical simulation tools can help automakers break these silos by helping critical load, design and model information to flow easily between each of these disciplines for EV powertrain development. Beyond EV development, additional new capabilities in this release improve simulation of other automotive applications from NVH, to tires, to windshield wiper performance. Highlights includes:
The new contact pattern display in Simcenter 3D helps analyze wiper contact patterns. By modeling the wiper as a flexible body combined with contact elements, the new contact pattern display will show easy to interpret results of the wiper forces across the windshield, allowing the user to learn how consistently or inconsistently the forces are distributed and if the wiper design is working as expected, without the need for costly and time-consuming physical testing.
Finally, the latest release of Siemens’ Simcenter Tire software has an updated road contact algorithm to reduce the large amount of road data exchange required to build the high-fidelity tire models required for driving simulators and Hardware-in-the-Loop set-ups. This means that computational performance is increased by up to 45% enabling the use of high-fidelity tire models in real-time applications.
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