CIAM took part in the AGILE working meeting and visited the Airbus factory in Toulouse

In the middle of December 2017, in the city of Toulouse, representatives of the P.I. Baranov Central Institute of Aviation Motors (CIAM, a subsidiary of the National Research Center ‘Zhukovsky Institute’) took part in the working meeting on the AGILE international project. The project targets multidisciplinary design optimization of airframe and propulsion system in distributed environment.

AGILE is part of Horizon 2020, the 8th European Union Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. It was launched in 2015 and planned for three years. The project coordinator is the Institute of Air Transportation Systems and Integration Design, a member of the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), Germany. Russia is represented in the project by the CIAM and TsAGI.

The meeting participants summed up the work results for two and a half years. "At this stage, the previously developed system for collaborative design is significantly expanding to explore promising integrated aircraft configurations, – explains the CIAM’s Project Manager Artur Mirzoyan. – A number of configurations are considered: a strut braced configuration; box wing configuration; Blended Wing Body (BWB) with powerplant placed into the free-stream flow; BWB with Boundary Layer Ingestion (BLI); aircraft with an advanced turboprop engine etc. CIAM, as the project competence center for the engine, is responsible for the development and provision of the engine deck".

At the meeting, A. Mirzoyan and A. Isyanov, CIAM’s Department Head, presented the main results on preliminary engine modeling for an aircraft with advanced turboprop, discussed them with partners and agreed with the foreign colleagues upon the formats to present the propulsion system performance for other integrated aircraft configurations. It shoud be noted that the matching of formats with partners from different countries took place in an interactive mode using automation software, such as KE-chain, KADMOS and VISTOM.

Within the framework of the working meeting, the participants visited the Airbus factory where the new long-haul wide-body commercial aircraft A350 XWB is assembled. "This aircraft has its own special assembling technology for the composite fuselage: namely, by connecting separately made panels – in contrast to the winding method used by Boeing for the B787 aircraft," – emphasized A. Mirzoyan. In the Airbus production hangars, the AGILE project participants saw not only the new A350, but also a huge "Beluga" cargo plane (A300-600ST Super Transporter) used for the transportation of bulky parts of the A350 XWB.

A further development was a meeting of the CIAM representatives and the AGILE project coordinator with the Airbus team at the Concurrent Engineering Design Facility equipped with large monitors and special communication tools. Two years ago, CIAM specialists attended the opening of a similar facility in the Skolkovo Innovation Center – the Concurrent Engineering Design Laboratory. Both facilities were developed by the Professor of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology Alessandro Golkar. Nowadays he heads the Airbus’ special department for concurrent engineering at the stage of aircraft preliminary design and project selection.

According to the CIAM researchers, the approaches developed in the AGILE project are in many aspects similar to the ones of the new Airbus’ department, and the range of tasks related to the evaluation of efficiency and the selection of promising projects is similar to the tasks of the CIAM’s Department for Evaluation of Propulsion System Efficiency on Aircraft Level. As a result of fruitful negotiations, an agreement was reached on a next meeting with the Golkar team to be held in Skolkovo.

Due to complexity and laboriousness, the participants decided to extend the AGILE project for six months. Tasks of the next work stage have also been outlined. 

CIAM plays a crucial role in creating a knowledge base of research projects, acting as an expert in the field of aircraft engine design.