CIAM discussed the outlook for work as part of an international project

Within the framework of the AGILE international project of the Horizon 2020 European program, a working meeting with representatives of NOESIS Solution (Belgium) was held in the Central Institute of Aviation Motors named after P.I. Baranov (CIAM, part of the National Research Center "Zhukovsky Institute") with the participation of experts from the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute named after N.E. Zhukovsky (TsAGI).

The AGILE international project is aimed at multidisciplinary aircraft optimization through innovative collaboration of diverse specialists. Researchers will be involved in the development of the third generation of multidisciplinary optimization (MDO) systems. The project's main goal is to develop a distributed environment for joint design of the aircraft and its power plant, aimed at uniting and automating the work of diverse expert teams. This environment will be used to combine the individual software and tools installed at the workstations of experts in various disciplines. This will allow them design aircraft together. According to rough estimations, the creation of such a system will speed up the solution of aircraft performance optimization problems by 40%.

The project will take three years; it started on June 1, 2015 as part of the 8th European Framework Programme for the Development of Research and Innovations, Horizon 2020. Eighteen organizations take part in the project, including DLR (Germany), Alenia (Italy), Bombardier (Canada), EADS (the E.U.), Fokker (the Netherlands), ONERA (France), among others. The AGILE project coordinator is the Institute for Aircraft Transportation Systems, part of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Russia is represented in the project by CIAM and the Central AeroHydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI).

The attention of the task force participants was focused on planning joint activities on the project utilizing the integration and optimization system OPTIMUS by NOESIS Solution. In particular, matters relating to the integration of CIAM's existing software into the OPTIMUS environment, as well as the definition and solution of optimization problems in the new software system were discussed.

The main functionality of the OPTIMUS software was demonstrated by representatives of NOESIS Solution and the Russian OPTIMUS distributor, the Novatest Company. During the presentation, they provided a number of examples of optimization studies conducted in the aircraft and automotive industries using OPTIMUS.

Based on the work results, plans were made to adjust CIAM's modules to solve optimization problems utilizing the OPTIMUS system. One of the main tasks will be robust optimization of promising aircraft and power plant configurations to be implemented next year.