The use of polymer based composite materials in aircraft structures has increased dramatically in the last decades and today they represent up to 50% in weight (Airbus A350 and Boeing B787 Dreamliner aircrafts) for wings, fuselage sections and tail surfaces. The driving force for the introduction of these materials in transport has been their contribution to weight reduction and fuel consumption savings, while offering outstanding mechanical properties. However, the use of composite materials in other parts of the planes that could benefit from the low weight, such as the fan blades of engines and/or nacelles, is progressing more slowly. This is partly because, even though some composite materials have shown a good response against strike incidents (bird or ice impact), experts do not yet fully understand why.
Understanding this dynamic behaviour is key for the incorporation of advanced composites in engines such as the Rolls Royce UltraFan™ concept. This engine “could be ready for service from 2025 and will offer at least 25 per cent improvement in fuel burn and emissions against the same baseline”. This dramatic increase in performance is expected to be achieved, amongst others, by the replacement of traditional metallic alloys by means of lighter composites. Carbon-titanium blades are one example of the novel components this engine will make use of.
The DYNACOM European Industrial Doctorate, a research endeavor funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions, aims at achieving the necessary knowledge on the dynamic behavior of composite materials, while contributing to building a new design paradigm in composite materials. The new design paradigm will accelerate the introduction of new composite materials in aeronautical parts that require a good dynamic behavior, such as the fan blades of the engine. As a matter of fact, the traditional trial and error approach currently used in the design of new aeronautical structural parts, requires a vast and expensive experimental testing campaign at coupon, component and (finally) structure level (see the figure below). DYNACOMP aims at reducing the cost and time-to-market associated to this pyramidal testing campaign by adding a bottom level (see the figure below), based on a virtual testing strategy, following a multiscale simulation approach and supported by a reduced and cheap set of mechanical tests at the micro-scale.
In order to achieve this ambitious goal, the DYNACOMP network will offer two Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) a comprehensive training programme with the objective of establishing the new design paradigm introduced in the previous paragraph. Andrea Trevisi and Maria Azzurra, Master’s degree in Materials Engineering by the University of Salento in Italy, are the two ESRs selected to carry out this project (starting in January 2017). Their work will be closely guided and supervised by renewed scientist in multiple disciplines: IMDEA Materials Institute (experts in micro-mechanics and modelling, leading the scientific direction of the project), HEXCEL (a global producer of advanced composites, end user) and Micro Materials (manufacturer of nanomechanical instruments). The quality of the training programme the ESRs will receive along the project will be monitored by Madri+d foundation and by the Technical University of Madrid.
The long-term goal of the DYNACOM project is to stablish a Doctorate programme on the dynamic behaviour of composite materials so that the next generation of composite engineers in the era of virtual testing are incorporated into the labour market.
Transitioning from physical trials to virtual testing requires a massive leap in computational capability. The multiscale simulation models must account for millions of microscopic variables—such as fiber alignment, resin distribution, and void formations—to accurately predict how a composite fan blade will behave under a sudden bird strike. Processing these highly localized defect probabilities demands exascale computing frameworks capable of running continuous stochastic models.
To support this analytical load without building prohibitive on-site supercomputers, research consortiums increasingly rely on dynamic cloud computing architectures. These distributed networks allocate processing nodes on demand, allowing the virtual testing platforms to ingest petabytes of mechanical data during peak simulation cycles.
The enterprise networking hardware managing this immense throughput routinely balances scientific workloads alongside massive commercial data streams. Server racks processing DYNACOMP’s stress-test algorithms operate adjacent to those hosting global financial ledgers and the best casino apps, relying on identical fiber-optic trunk lines and load-balancing protocols to prevent latency. For the aerospace researchers, this shared backend infrastructure ensures that their complex finite element analyses maintain stable uptime even when calculating thousands of simultaneous impact vectors.
With reliable computational power secured, the virtual testing strategy can finally match the rigor of traditional physical campaigns. By the time physical prototypes are manufactured for a final validation drop-test, the software has already mapped every conceivable failure mode. Ultimately, this digital-first approach will be the catalyst for launching lighter, more fuel-efficient aircraft engines into commercial airspace by the end of the decade.
For more information about the DYNACOMP project please contact Dr. Jon Molina
(This information has been published in MSCA Blog by Madri+d)