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Uncertainty Management for Robust Industrial Design in Aeronautics

Final Report Summary - UMRIDA (Uncertainty Management for Robust Industrial Design in Aeronautics)

Final publishable summary report

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- An executive summary (not exceeding 1 page).
- A summary description of project context and objectives (not exceeding 4 pages).
- A description of the main S&T results/foregrounds (not exceeding 25 pages),
- The potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far) and the main dissemination activities and exploitation of results (not exceeding 10 pages).
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Executive Summary

Virtual prototyping (VP) is a key technology for environmental friendly and cost effective design in the aircraft industry. However, the underlying analysis and simulation tools, are currently applied with a unique set of input data and model variables, although realistic operating conditions are a superposition of numerous uncertainties under which the industrial products operate (uncertainties on operational conditions, on geometries resulting from manufacturing tolerances, numerical error sources and uncertain physical model parameters). Major new developments in this new scientific area of Uncertainty Management and Quantification (UM and UQ) and Robust Design Methods (RDM) are needed to bridge the gap towards industrial readiness. The UMRIDA project, which stands for Uncertainty Management for Robust Industrial Design in Aeronautics, addresses these objectives by performing major research in both UQ and RDM and developing methods to handle a large number of simultaneous uncertainties including generalized geometrical uncertainties within a quantifiable objective of a turn-around time acceptable for industrial readiness. To assess the quantifiable objective, the developed methods are applied to a unique database with prescribed uncertainties build from industrial challenges provided by the project partners.

Research was performed in both UQ and RDM and developing methods to handle a large number of simultaneous uncertainties including generalized geometrical uncertainties within a quantifiable objective of a turn-around time acceptable for industrial readiness. A series of different methodologies was investigated and successfully assessed on the unique database with prescribed uncertainties, which was built from industrial challenges provided by the project partners. The UMRIDA project allowed to raise the Technology Readiness Level for various methodologies for UQ and RDO from a basic level 2-3 to an industrial applied level of 5-6, demonstrated by the application of the developed methods to industrial challenges form the UMRIDA database while respecting the quantifiable object defined. The turn-around times of these methods are at the end of the project appropriate for use in daily engineering practice. This was achieved by reaching speedups of 5 to 10 for all methods investigated by the consortium partners.

The UMRIDA project reached nearly all objectives and in its whole clearly responds to all main challenges and goals that were set out to reach at the start of the project. The UMRIDA database with prescribed uncertainties formed the backbone of the project, and it was used for assessment of the developed uncertainty quantification and robust design optimization methodologies. The developed UQ and RDO methods are now in use by the industrial project partners, and software vendors integrated the findings of the project into their commercial software offer. First functionalities have been available to their clients since mid-term of the project on and the availability of methods is constantly enlarged. Some industrial and academic partners contribute to in-house or open source libraries, which equally have been extended throughout the project.