Professor András Sóbester, University of Southampton

The aerospace industry has made massive strides towards re-engineering its product development processes to benefit from 21^st-century computing advances. All geometry is now digital and computational simulations forecast flight physics with sufficient accuracy to inform design changes. However, the digital transformation is incomplete. This project, in partnership with Airbus, proposes to drive it forward on several fronts, most importantly bringing significant efficiency gains to the highly ‘fluid’ conceptual phase of the design process. Professor Sóbester aims to automate exploration of the space of possible architectures in solving a design problem. Computer modelling currently drives design decision-making in terms of relatively subtle changes; here the project plans to transform its scope to the general layout of a system. As the industry looks towards a new generation of transport aircraft with significantly different architectures (featuring, for example, hydrogen propulsion), it is the right time for technologies that increase the flexibility of digital models.