Commitment to CAE environment for GKN Westland Helicopters

Citation

(1998), "Commitment to CAE environment for GKN Westland Helicopters", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 70 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.1998.12770dab.018

Commitment to CAE environment for GKN Westland Helicopters

Commitment to CAE environment for GKN Westland Helicopters

Keywords CAE, Helicopters, Software, Westland

GKN Westland Helicopters' latest order to supply 15 Cormorant aircraft to the Canadian Forces announced in January 1998 has secured the company's commitment to move from a 2D CADCAM environment to a 3D CAE environment entirely.

Westland Helicopters has ordered five more IBM RS6000 workstations running CAE software CATIA from CATIA solution provider, ICE Ltd of Hemel Hempstead. The helicopter company has invested approximately £1 million in CATIA in the last 12 months and will now have a total of 27 seats. CATIA products used include CATIA Data Management (CDM) with which the company is to achieve a fully integrated method of controlling design and assembly processes.

The 15 search and rescue helicopters ordered by the Canadian government adds to Westland Helicopters' current order book for 83 EH101 aircraft ordered by the British Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, the Italian Navy and a civil customer in the Far East.

The EH101, developed jointly by Westland Helicopters of Yeovil, Somerset, and Agusta SpA of Italy, is a major breakthrough in world helicopter design as, for the first time, the military and civil variants of the basic model have been developed in one single integrated programme. In addition, it was the first helicopter designed without the use of manual drawings in a 2D digital environment using Dassault/IBM's CADAM software, the predecessor to CATIA.

Mike Evans is GKN Westland Helicopters' Mechanical CAE Project manager with responsibility for making the company's transition from a 2D to 3D CAE environment as painless as possible.

"The development of the EH101 demonstrates how we reaped the rewards of moving from a manual to a 2D drawing environment. We're now committed to making the transition to 3D across the whole organisation to achieve the time and cost savings made possible through the use of CATIA technology.

"All new design work across the company is now undertaken using CATIA. One of the first examples of the benefit of this was the design of new rescue hoists for the EH101. The digital 3D model created highlighted a clash on the surface structure. This potentially costly error was thereby eradicated at the design stage, way ahead of cutting metal, and without the need for any physical mock ups."

Other CATIA projects have included some remodelling of the EH101 forward fuselage and landing gear using CATIA's digital mock up capabilities.

The next stage in the transition process is the communication of the benefits of CATIA to the rest of the organisation ­ namely the time and cost savings associated with electronic mock up and enabling enterprise-wide access to data created from CATIA models.

"ICE has been commissioned to work with us on this internal communications issue as well as continuing to be the providers of our software, hardware, technical support and tailored on-site training", said Mike Evans.

"Jointly, we are investigating use of the corporate intranet within the CATIA environment to communicate the benefits of CATIA cost effectively and allow access to useful data by anyone within the organisation who requires it, including the guy on the assembly line. For downstream suppliers, where additional security will be required, we are looking at extranet possibilities", he said.

Other CATIA modules in use at GKN Westland Helicopters include Exact Solids and Kinematics.

For further details contact Interactiv Computing Europe Ltd. Tel: +44 (0) 1442 281200; Fax: +44 (0) 1442 243308.