THE future of the aerospace industry could be determined by the launch of a new centre for virtual engineering in Cheshire.
The University of Liverpool is to lead a new centre for virtual engineering at Daresbury Laboratory, following the confirmation of a £5.3m investment.
It will be named, unsurprisingly, The Virtual Engineering Centre.
Virtual Engineering (VE) involves integrated product and process modelling and the creation of virtual prototypes.
It will form a critical foundation for all future business in the aerospace sector and beyond.
Major aerospace companies are committed to VE because it provides a cost-effective method of presenting future options to the customer and capturing their requirements.
In spite of this and the associated VE developments, integrated VE tools and techniques have not been successfully implemented across the whole development process and throughout the supply chain. This presents a major barrier to organisations adopting the technology.
The Virtual Engineering Centre aims to address this through a public-private sector partnership bringing together the University of Liverpool, the Science and Technology Facilities Council at Daresbury, the Northwest Aerospace Alliance and its members, and crucially the prime contractors who see the development of the Centre as critical to the survival of the region’s aerospace cluster.
The Centre will also explore solutions to many important engineering issues like meeting future EU requirements to cut airliner fuel consumption by 50%, by exploring improvements to aeroplane design and their engines.
The Virtual Engineering Centre will act in various principal ways.
It will be a physical virtual engineering centre which will contain “best practice” facilities that display integrated, interactive simulation and modelling software across the full range of virtual capabilities.
Additionally, it will be a research partnership which will add value to existing research activities within the region by providing a commercially relevant focus.
It will act as a knowledge exchange centre to increase awareness and give potential users an opportunity to “try before they buy”, so that they can become more confident of the business advantages that can accrue from using VE tools.
Finally, it will be an educational centre to help meet the current skills shortages in VE in the UK.
The Centre is part-funded by the Northwest European Regional Development Fund (ERDF),and the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA). Project partners include the Science and Technology Facilities Council at Daresbury, the Northwest Aerospace Alliance, Airbus, Morsons and BAE Systems.
