The Digital Twin Will Assist to Improve Specifications of Small-sized Aircraft Engines

Issues of collaboration within the project on development of technologies for small-sized turbo generators and turbojet engines were discussed at the working meeting of representatives of the Advanced Aerospace Engineering School of the Samara National Research University and the Advanced Engineering School of Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU).

The key topic of discussion was related to participation of specialists from the Advanced Engineering Schools of the two universities in R&D on creating a demonstrator of small-sized gas turbine engine (GTE) technologies for the GTE with its thrust of 50 kgf for the unmanned aircraft systems industry.

Vitaly Smelov, Deputy Director of Samara University’s Advanced Aerospace Engineering School, apprised of the University to have won the competition of the National Technology Initiative Foundation and have become the R&D executor in one of the areas of the Federal Project “Promising Technologies for Unmanned Aviation Systems” within the National Project “Unmanned Aviation Systems”.

“Following the results of the competitive selection, Samara National Research University have been entitled to carry out R&D on the theme “Research and Development of Promising Technologies Reducing Specific Fuel Consumption and Increasing the Resource of Small-Sized Turbo Generators and Turbojet Engines”. In the near future, we will start implementing this work and would like to see SPbPU’s Advanced Engineering School “Digital Engineering” as a co-executor when performing the R&D components”, explained Vitaly Smelov.

Aleksey Borovkov, Vice-Rector for Digital Transformation at SPbPU, Head of the Advanced Engineering School “Digital Engineering”, drew attention to the existing experience of collaboration with Samara University’s Advanced Aerospace Engineering School. He noted that Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University is proactively involved in implementing the Strategy for Unmanned Aviation Development in Russia and the National Project “Unmanned Aviation Systems”.

“By using our development – the CML-Bench® Digital Platform for designing and applying digital twins, we can perform the work on optimizing methods for UAS and their components to be designed, as well as introduce innovative tools and technologies into operation of the industry research centres and manufacturers of UAVs. Moreover, divisions of the ecosystem of SPbPU’s technological development have formed the extensive scientific and technological reserve in various industries. The largest number of projects is being implemented in the propulsion engineering industry and the nuclear industry. Thus, we are interested in performing together high-level works”, stressed Aleksey Borovkov.

Samara University is included in the pool of high-tech companies and educational institutions that use the CML-Bench® Digital Platform for designing and applying digital twins in their project and scientific educational activities.

One of the issues discussed at the meeting was forming the tools and filling

the CML-Bench® Digital Platform with the validation basis, which will make it possible to bring to the market a single platform solution for testing, verification and validation of domestic software.

As noted by Vitaly Smelov, Samara University has a huge amount of experimental data and extensive experience in validating domestic software for the tasks of combustion, thermoexchange and multiphase flows, in interests of the United Engine Corporation (part of the Rostec State Corporation).

Vitaly Smelov also invited representatives of SPbPU’s “Digital Engineering” to take part in the N. D. Kuznetsov All-Russian Scientific and Technical Forum on Engines and Power Facilities, to be held on October 10–11, 2024. The Forum Organizers are Samara University and “UEC-Kuznetsov” PJSC.

Photo: spbstu.ru