Delivering aero engine excellence

Nick Lerner reveals how Dassault Systèmes' 3D Experience platform is helping to promote innovative processes at Rolls-Royce. No other company name has a place in the English language than Rolls-Royce and since its inception the company has become synonymous with integrity, reliability and innovation. Today it's the world's second largest civil and military aero engine company, a global leader in marine propulsion and a leading supplier of energy solutions - all businesses that have gas turbine technology at their heart. With its central organising thought ‘To be trusted to deliver excellence', Rolls-Royce is also one of the world's most innovative companies and has developed a broad range of technologies to universal benefit. The engineering Group uses many advanced software tools to progress its work. Darren James a composite design technologist, based at the company's Derby location discusses the use of Dassault Systèmes' CATIA The Digital Product Experience in several research and development projects. “We use Dassault Systèmes (DS) technology as an enabler across various projects. Very often we need to investigate the properties of new materials, new types of construction and new manufacturing processes, in potential applications. This involves developing digital 3D software models of components and whole systems. 3D models are used for many purposes including being meshed for finite element analysis (FEA), engineering analysis, and manufacturing optimisation techniques. We assessed the software products on the market that could potentially manage these tasks and the only one that fulfilled all of our criteria was CATIA supplied with Dassault Systèmes Composites Design Workbench. “Some of the software that we investigated restricted our work by imposing constrictions that limit creativity and imagination. CATIA doesn't restrict our work and it's very easy to use. It's also flexible and very powerful. This makes it easy to create, analyse and modify designs and is a boon to our design development productivity because it allows us to time-compress projects by significant percentages. “There are no limits to what the system allows and its export function is very useful for enabling other parts of the extended enterprise to receive data in formats that are best suited to their needs. This means that design, methods and analysis data are quickly available for others to utilise in their work. That speed allows concurrent engineering with all of its resultant advantages and benefits. There are fewer hold ups and work flows between departments much faster and with assured accuracy.” Exploiting the knowledge Ian Care, an engineering specialist at the company, adds that for many years Rolls-Royce has worked with the most advanced materials available. “The company was responsible for developing carbon fibre technology 60 years ago and is at the forefront of its application today. Dassault Systèmes Composite Design technology allows us to exploit our knowledge and experience of this material fully. The software is also deployed on research and development projects with new and exotic materials where it is valuable for its powerful flexible ease of use.” Adds James: “We define designs and develop methods using CATIA. Ply characteristics, shape and volume calculation is very simple as is ply ordering. The software makes some formerly complex jobs very simple through automation. This helps take days off our work. Designers are able to define shapes, orientation and laminate stacking sequences using MS Excel spreadsheets or the inbuilt ‘Interactive Ply Table' function to drive design simulation - a very powerful function.” Rolls-Royce has found many hidden features within the Composite Design software, which has helped them to look in great detail at non-isotropic organic matrix materials and much more. The company is pushing technology and has used 3D Experiences to advance its explorations. Rolls-Royce has also deployed solutions from Dassault Systemes SIMULIA brand Abaqus, software for Realistic Simulation and FEA, and found that used in conjunction with the Digital Product Experience and design simulation, it provides a seamless development platform. Checking complex laminates is greatly simplified using CATIA's ply sectioning tool. Records are maintained and rules-compliance checking is simple too using the ‘Core Sample' function. James continues: “We get great support from DS and they have helped us to solve problems and improve the software's functionality. The benefits of using CATIA in this application are the simplification of tasks and significant increases in the speed of work. Some jobs that used to take weeks to complete now take days. “We're able to use automated functions to maximum advantage to do more iterations and more digital testing in less time. We can now achieve things that were formerly impossible. The technology allows us to optimise structural models for impact, weight, aerodynamics and manufacturability. It's a fantastic learning tool that delivers real efficiencies.” Care concludes: “Composite Design coupled with the advanced meshing capabilities within the software is an enabler of tasks that couldn't be achieved before. It allows us to reduce fuel consumption, noise and emissions while improving time to market. It puts no limits on our imagination across our business and helps us to make more rapid development advances. “Very often manufacturing development is in advance of software development. Dassault Systèmes CATIA Composite Design is a solution looking for problems and at Rolls-Royce that makes it more than welcome.” www.3ds.com