Originally Posted by
NutLoose
What surprises me is the fact that digital engineering appears to be the new way of doing things, I would’ve thought digital engineering would’ve been in the production and development of new aircraft for the last couple of decades.
Indeed it has.
But with even more increasing computing power - more resolution - you have the ability to more definitively model computational fluid dynamics, load paths etc.
Means you can have a much more finalised design before you cut metal or autoclave composites.
No doubt it will be a while before we learn - if ever - but the information out at the moment suggests they may have reached a very advanced level of being able to design a `fully' digital airplane.
My non-engineer understanding is that the limitation to date on ultimately designing and test flying a notional design fully inside a digital windtunnel has been the resolution of the voxels allowed by computing power to simulate the fluid flows at sufficiently fine detail.
Perhaps there have been significant advances in that area.
Some one who knows more about this aspect of airframe design may be able to comment.
The same may be true for low observable characteristics.