DIGITIZATION
DIGITAL ENGINEERING BECOMING THE LICENCE TO OPERATE IN THE AEROSPACE INDUSTRY
A SHORTER TIME-TO-SPACE ‘Aerospace industry in Europe – what can we expect from digital engineering?’ was the title of an online event organised by MathWorks Benelux last autumn. With a focus on the space industry, it demonstrated that the rise of commercial players drives the adoption of digital engineering, according to Marcel Stakenborg from MathWorks. ‘The holy grail of the space industry is to combine reliability with speed of development. For the agencies reliability is core focus, whilst for start-ups it is speed of development. Digital engineering can bring the two close to each other.’ NASA’s Orion spacecraft has automatically generated GN&C code, for guidance, navigation and control.
BY HANS VAN EERDEN
T
he online meeting attracted some sixty attendees from 40 different companies. Stakenborg: ‘The technology MathWorks has developed for other industries is relevant to space: simulations, systems engineering and even automated driving to name but a few. To provide additional support for this prominent industry, we reached out to Ossi Saarela to assess key trends in space for the Benelux region.’ Saarela is worldwide space segment manager at MathWorks and he sees ‘globally an exciting landscape in the space industry’. ‘From the technology as well as the business perspectives. New players such as SpaceX have become established parties and even newer waves of start-ups are continuously emerging. In this disruptive
DIGITAL BY MATHWORKS MathWorks is a leading developer of data analysis and model-based design software. It supports digital engineering through its platforms, of which MATLAB, Simulink and Simscape, are best known. They form a natural basis for building a digital twin, which MathWorks defines as an evolving digital representation of a product, process or system that calculates its status and generates information. In this way, through integrated, systematic use of data and models, decision-making for design and operation can be supported throughout the entire lifecycle.
• www.mathworks.com
Image: NASA
market, start-ups, which have no legacy products or processes, are starting with a clean sheet design and adopting whatever new technology suits them. Their primary consideration is how to quickly get to the market. Established organisations, on the other hand, are responding by modernising their existing engineering processes. Development processes in the industry are very rigorous, as this is a high-risk industry, and it takes new generations of start-ups to challenge conventions a little bit and in some cases accept increased levels of risk that we haven’t seen for a number of decades.’
MISSION VALIDATION In short, what MathWorks has to offer to the space industry is mission validation. With full adoption of digital engineering, a single digital environment is available for modelling and simulating at different scales. For space missions, this concerns the control of multiple spacecraft and multiple ground stations, covering the full-mission system-of-systems scale down to the level of a single spacecraft or even an individual motor controller. Saarela: ‘We see start-ups embracing digital engineering, because for them it’s an enabler to get to space faster, not having to start from scratch but using existing tools as a foundation. For the established companies and agencies working on highly complex, rigorous projects, the main value of digital engineering lies in managing the complexity of the systems concerned. As compared to traditional document-based engineering, digital engineering helps them to improve their systems engineering processes to assure
the quality of their products.’ In addition, one of the practical but crucial reasons for focussing on digital engineering is that in the space industry it is very hard and expensive to test actual hardware in operation, which is very much in contrast to the automotive industry, where a car can be fitted with sensors and just drive away for testing.
AUTOMATIC CODE GENERATION Just like the defence and aerospace industries have been setting industry-wide standards with respect to reliability and safety engineering, the space industry has led the pack with automatic code generation, Saarela claims. ‘There have already been many flights with automatically generated code for space flight software aboard the spacecraft. And a big one is coming up: NASA’s Orion spacecraft, which will be capable of carrying humans to deep space destinations; its GN&C code, for guidance, navigation, and control, is automatically generated.’ Space industry is also a forerunner in big data handling, adds Anas. ‘The amount of data and compute capabilities are exploding in all industries, which we saw already happening in the space segment in the sixties. Other industries have begun copying approaches to data orchestration, analytics, high-performance computing, etc. The ability to model, simulate and analyse system of systems is also inspired by the aerospace industry. The challenge is to manage the increasing complexity of the software.’ Saarela: ‘We are getting to the point where digital engineering is going to be TO BE CONTINUED ON PAGE 41
Special High-tech The Netherlands - April 2022
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