Computational Engineering

The power of simulation means aircraft can fly, ships can sail and submarines can dive without ever leaving the designers desktop. The ability to accurately model how structures interact with their environment and respond to applied forces, all before ever cutting material, enables our customers to de-risk their design solutions, reduce development testing costs and deliver confidence in their design solutions.
Computer modelling and simulation is a core competence of the ATC. Focused on delivering solutions to engineering problems, this multidisciplinary area is an increasingly important service for our commercial and military customers, driving benefits across time to market,development cost and product performance.
The ATC is the custodian of BAE Systems benchmark aerodynamic models,developed and refined over many years’ application experience within the aerospace industry. We offer a comprehensive modelling and simulation capability extending from low speed civil aircraft right through to supersonic military platforms. Our Computational Fluid Dynamics activities embrace unstructured meshes for high fidelity solutions on complex configurations, algorithm development, pre and post processing
systems. Additional offerings include rapid response engineering tools, wind tunnel technologies and ice accretion modelling.
Traditional fluid dynamics techniques are limited in their ability to model free flowing fluids. Using innovative and novel methods in Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH), fluids are simulated as a collection of individual particles which interact in a realistic manner. This approach enables us to offer the accurate modelling of fluid flow problems such as fuel sloshing in tanks and is of particular value in providing visualisation of free surface movement and action. Within the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum, our simulation and analysis tools cover electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) of structures and complex systems, susceptibility to EM hazards and EM sensor performance issues.
Our expertise extends across microwave and RF systems through to infra-red signature prediction.
With multiple RF systems providing sensing and communications functions situated in close proximity to each other on platforms, we are able to predict and illustrate the interaction between each of the antennas and deliver solutions to improve installed antenna performance.
For structural simulation,we operate commercial and proprietary tools to provide cost effective services to our customers. Delivering the ability to analyse structural dynamics, impact events, fluid interactions and materials processing, we provide effective solutions for complex geometries and operating regimes. The service enables the transition from CAD through model generation to results interpretation and visualisation.
Our simulation and analysis capability extends to coupled environments, modelling situations where structures interact with elements in their environment such as fluids, heat transfer and electromagnetic energy, as well as modelling aerodynamic and structural response in both static and dynamic situations.
We are at the cutting edge of Design Search and Optimisation – researching, developing and applying this discipline across commercial and military sectors. With capabilities encompassing parametric modelling, multidisciplinary design and Response Surface Modelling, our in-house optimisation toolset, DECIFER,links with other workflow process tools and has been successfully used for wing design and underwater systems.