Airbus and Cadence Develop A Secure Co-Simulation Platform For Advanced Collaboration

Image courtesy of Airbus

In the scope of the European Union Horizon2020 CleanSky mission, Cadence is working together with Airbus on the Multi-Site Coupled simulation for Advanced collaborative design (MUSICA) project.

Clean Sky - Transforming Aviation to Serve a Climate Neutral Society

The Clean Sky project, a public-private partnership between the European Commission and the European aeronautics industry, is the most ambitious aeronautical research program ever launched in Europe. Its core mission is to develop breakthrough technologies to significantly increase the environmental performance of aircraft, closing the gap towards a climate neutral society with clean aviation.

In the words of Clean Sky’s Head of Strategy, Ron van Manen “We need skip-a-generation technology. The journey towards the next generation of aircraft needs to start today...” ⁽¹⁾

MUSICA - Multi-Site Coupled Simulation for Advanced Collaborative Design

One of the many challenges projects like Clean Sky face, is efficient collaboration between all the organizations involved that each have their own expertise and tools, and, even more importantly, that have intellectual property and sensitive data to be protected. To solve this on the level of multidisciplinary (CFD, FSI, CAA) design applications, Cadence Design Systems and Airbus are working together on developing a collaborative, multi-site coupled environment that allows co-simulation across independent projects, while protecting the confidential data and know-how of all parties involved.

The first objective of the MUSICA project is to extend Cadence’s Omnis collaborative platform with a conservative coupling library and open it to the community. Scientists and industrials will be able to couple their own solvers to the platform and easily enable code-to-code coupling with other solvers, while leveraging all the benefits of the integrated platform.

The second objective is to allow secure site-to-site coupling through the public internet, without sharing intellectual property. By design all sensitive data will be kept secure within each organization’s perimeters, while only the required coupling data is shared through the common interface. The platform will be able to establish a secure and encrypted connection between two endpoints in order to exchange coupling boundary data at regular intervals.

Airbus Target Use Case

To test the effectiveness of the platform, a first demo case is being set up in Airbus: a multi-site co-simulation for an airframe and fan geometry of a commercial aircraft. Typically, the entity responsible for the airframe, does not have access to the fan geometry and vice versa. Both endpoints to be connected are computer nodes of distinct HPC centers. They are protected behind fire walls and NAT devices and do not have direct access to the internet. The project will favor a durable solution, compliant with IT policies of both sites, and require minimum administrator intervention.

With this project Cadence wants to contribute to streamlined, hassle-free and secure collaboration between organizations worldwide, and in particular between the broad spectrum of partners of the Clean Sky project, in order to enable them to reach their goal of reducing CO2 emissions and noise levels produced by aircraft.

For more CFD topics related to the EU Horizon 2020 project and sustainable aviation:

Pipistrel Mitigates Aviation Noise Emissions for Electric Aircraft

AeroDelft Pushes the Airline Industry towards a Sustainable Future with Liquid Hydrogen Aircraft

^{(1) Ron van Manen, Clean Sky Head of Strategy, during a presentation about clean aviation at the Technische Universiteit Delft}