VIVACE – Value Improvement through a Virtual Aeronautical Collaborative Enterprise
The VIVACE integrated R&T project, co-ordinated by Airbus and co-funded by the European Commission, was set-up in the framework of AECMA addressing Aeronautics’ Vision 2020 objectives. It was launched in January 2004 and was planned to run for 4 years. 63 companies
and institutions co-operate in the project, among which there are 8 SMEs.
VIVACE has used as a start point, past experiences and results gained in concurrent engineering activities such as the European project ENHANCE (1999-2002).
VIVACE overall objectives
VIVACE intends to achieve a 5% cost reduction in aircraft development and a 5% reduction of the development phase of a new aircraft design combined with a contribution to a 30% reduction in the lead-time and 50% reduction in development costs respectively for a new or derivative gas turbine engine. To achieve this overall objective, the work in VIVACE is organised around Use Cases, i.e. real industrial simulations of a part of the aircraft or the engine or of a development process, reflecting both the Virtual Product and the Virtual Extended Enterprise. Each of them includes on the one hand requirements for early product simulation and on the other hand requirements for distributed working methods.
Description of work
VIVACE comprises three technical sub-projects. Two of them represent the aircraft and engine products and the third one ensures integration of component frameworks developed by the first two into an advanced concurrent engineering design framework — the
VIVACE Collaborative Design Environment.
At its end, VIVACE is delivering a Virtual Product Design and Validation Platform based on a distributed concurrent engineering methodology supporting the Virtual Enterprise.
1. Virtual Aircraft (sub-project leader AIRBUS)
The Virtual Aircraft Sub-Project revolves around the main components that constitute an aircraft and has six integrated technical work packages (System Simulation, Components, Global Aircraft, Flight Physics Simulation, Complex Sub-systems, Supportability Engineering). It is
designed to cover the aircraft product throughout the development life cycle (design, modelling, interfacing and testing).
2. Virtual Engine (sub-project leader ROLLS-ROYCE)
The Virtual Engine Sub-Project consists of five integrated technical work packages performing fundamental research to provide capabilities for a competitive European jet engine industry working across extended enterprises (Extended Jet Engine Enterprise Scenario, Life Cycle Modelling within the Virtual Engine Enterprise, Whole Engine Development, European Cycle Program, Supply Chain Manufacturing Workflow Simulation). It has developed the different engine modules of the aircraft propulsion system and key areas of multi-disciplinary optimisation, knowledge management and collaborative enterprises.
The project report is available here.