Aerospace

Rolls-Royce partners with Ansys and Intel to accelerate sustainable aviation

Posted 14 June 2023

Rolls-Royce has collaborated with Ansys and Intel to reduce the simulation time of the thermo-mechanical model of Rolls-Royce's gas-turbine engine from more than 1,000 hours to less than 10 hours, saving energy and development costs.

Above: Cross-section of the Rolls-Royce Representative Engine Model.
Courtesy Rolls-Royce / PRNewsFoto / Ansys Inc.

This collaboration was also supported by the computing resources at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, HPE, and researchers at the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications).

Powered by Ansys' advanced simulation and Intel's high-performance computing (HPC) technologies, Rolls-Royce is working on accelerating engineering solve times, reducing operational power consumption and creating virtual prototypes of its energy and fuel-efficient gas turbine engines, up to 100X faster.

As a result, Rolls-Royce is able to rapidly deliver clean and complex propulsion solutions for safety-critical applications in the air, at sea and on land. The advanced technology from Ansys and Intel also supports digital research and development (R&D), which incorporates simulation and digital twins to improve engine design for more sustainable, climate-neutral solutions for drive, propulsion and power generation.

"Rolls-Royce is committed to reaching net-zero within our own operation by 2030 and to enabling the sectors in which we operate to reach net-zero by 2050," said Todd Simons, HPC expert at Rolls-Royce. "To achieve these goals and reduce emissions successfully, digital transformation is necessary. We believe cutting-edge technologies from Ansys and Intel will enable us to develop smarter, cleaner, and safer engines to power a more sustainable future for aviation while also reducing our operational carbon footprint."

Ansys helps Rolls-Royce reduce memory requirements, accelerate performance, and improve parallel efficiency. Using the Intel oneAPI Math Kernel Library MKL, Ansys LS-DYNA enables simulations to consume less memory and run orders of magnitude faster, which conserves power and energy consumption.

"Ansys is one of Intel's premier independent software vendor (ISV) partners and we're proud to collaborate on projects that make new innovations possible," said Scott Clark, vice president of the Super Compute Group at Intel. "Together with our shared focus of using Intel's HPC platforms and open software to unlock new levels of performance, we will enable customers like Rolls-Royce to solve their most challenging problems faster."

Rolls-Royce also leverages digital twin technology to create high-fidelity designs and virtual prototypes. By incorporating simulation and digital twins throughout the development process, Rolls-Royce gains critical engineering insights to design more efficient propulsion systems.

"Ansys is proud to collaborate with Rolls-Royce and Intel to leverage the power of simulation and related technologies to develop cleaner engines, combat climate concerns, and reduce emissions," said Shane Emswiler, senior vice president of products at Ansys. "We are confident that Ansys' simulation portfolio and Intel's compute power will equip Rolls-Royce engineers to positively impact the future of aviation."