Cutting aircraft time and development costs
Cutting aircraft time and development costs
Keywords: University of Warwick, Aerospace industry
A recent meeting of 20 of Europe's leading aerospace organisations at the University of Warwick was the latest phase of a e38 million project to cut 30 per cent of the cost and time it takes to develop new aircraft.
The three-year ENHANCE project receives half its funding from the European Commission. The University of Warwick hosted the conference as one of the partners in the project. Other partners include: Aerospatiale Matra Airbus,Alenia, BAe Systems, CASA, DaimlerChrysler Aerospace Airbus, Dassault Aviation,Eurocopter, Rolls-Royce, Saab, Air France, DERA and SNECMA. A total of 11 European countries were represented.
The ENHANCE consortium has been built around the major players of all the aeronautic sectors (builders of air-frames of both large and small aircraft,engines, equipment, helicopters, SME suppliers and airlines) and research centres.
Europe's aerospace sector has an annual turnover of approximately e35 billion and export of aircraft and aeronautical products is a key item in the balance of trade of the main countries in the European Union. To maintain and develop this sector with its 330,000 highly qualified jobs spread over nearly 80,000 companies, the ENHANCE project will help radically reorganize working methods(design, development, production, maintenance, services to airlines) drawing particularly on concurrent engineering techniques with these aims:
reduce the Aircraft Development Time Scale by 30 per cent,
reduce the development costs by 30 per cent,
reduce costs associated with interpretation, interpretation and regeneration of transmitted data by 20 per cent,
establish a strong European presence and influence in the generation and adoption of global standards.
The results of the ENHANCE project will be applied to the next civil transport aircraft programmes such as A3XX, AE3IX, Tilt-Rotor, Falcon, etc.
