AERALIS to mark completion of milestone digital project for UK Ministry of Defence with Helix event.

AERALIS will welcome special guests from the UK MOD, regulators and AERALIS digital partner, Siemens, to their headquarters in Bristol this week to celebrate delivery of a landmark proof-of-concept contract.

In what AERALIS believes to be “the most digitally linked engineering trial” yet undertaken in aerospace, a subset of the AERALIS Phoenix programme was chosen to validate the viability of digital engineering to design, model, test and certify an aircraft.

The work provides the digital workspace for application of the RAF’s open systems architecture framework, Pyramid, as well as providing UK MOD with unique knowledge and know-how for future Combat Air (such as the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP)).

AERALIS Capability Director, Anton Burford CEng MIMechE, commented:

“We’ve been referring to this approach as a ‘digital weave’ because in terms of complexity it’s a paradigm shift beyond a digital thread. To achieve end-to-end, digital-design-to-digital-certification, demands a level of assurance that has never been done before. The engineering alone is challenging, but from an assurance/regulatory perspective it’s a whole new world.”

In the spirit of the AERALIS enterprise approach, the project was achieved with close co-operation with the regulators, the MOD and Siemens.

AERALIS founder and CEO, Tristan Crawford, commented:

“The digital undertaking required to deliver Phoenix is far beyond what our industry has seen to date. The AERALIS team has demonstrated world-leading expertise in delivering this groundbreaking project for the MOD. It’s a key step towards hitting our timeline, showing the way for other future military aircraft programmes to deliver safe, cost-effective and flexible capability to the frontline faster.”

AERALIS has named the demonstration event ‘Helix’, likening the digital weave to a spiral chain running through the entire engineering process.

We’ll report back from the event later this week so do make sure you follow AERALIS to stay up to date.