Aerospace and Defense industry

If major European Aerospace and Defense companies are our customers, there are many good reasons.

An ongoing challenge for these companies, for example, is that they must produce systems that operate in different environments, such as air and land, naval and maritime, space and cyber-space, and of course, each product comes with its own special requirements.

PCB Design and Verification

The products of Aerospace and Defense companies are mainly multi-board projects that include analog and digital programmable devices, with high-speed communication lanes and high-efficiency DC/ DC converters close to analog nets. Their boards are very complex. In designing these complex boards, companies face a spectrum of challenges ranging from ensuring signal and power integrity, to manufacturability, meeting reliability and cost requirements, and up to providing higher functions with increased thermal density successfully. One of the designer’s biggest challenges is the complex routing required for their many high-speed nets to the FPGA.

To address these design challenges and achieve right-the-first-time innovations quickly, they use the tools like Xpedition, PADS Professional, HyperLynx, and Valor NPI.

Simulation

Siemens' Simcenter software uniquely combines system simulation, 3D CAE, and test to help Aerospace and Defense designers to predict performance across all critical attributes earlier and throughout the entire product lifecycle. By combining physics-based simulations with insights gained from data analytics, Simcenter tools like Flotherm XT and FLOEFD help you optimize the design and deliver innovations faster and with greater confidence.

Electrical System Design

For Electrical Systems, the Capital tool suite from Siemens allows Aerospace and Defense manufacturers to improve response times, introduce new technology and innovation, reduce the cost of documentation and improve affordability up and down the supply chain through repurposing and re-use. Engineering teams reduce the probability of being surprised by unexpected issues during platform integration that could force costly iterations. Capital is the only electrical environment that spans the full electrical system value chain: from electrical system definition, through design, into the manufacture, and finally, to support and maintenance.

Hardware Design

All in-flight hardware (i.e., PLD, FPGA, or ASIC designs) must comply with the DO-254 requirements-driven process-oriented safety standard. Today’s safety-critical FPGA designs are typically verified using only simulation-based directed test verification. These methods must be complemented to adequately verify the near infinite state space of the largest designs. Without better verification, it’s impossible to clearly demonstrate that a safety-critical design is truly robust. Siemens EDA Questa Formal Verification, the market leader in formal model checking, can work with simulation to greatly improve design safety and reliability. In addition, this can provide additional DO-254 credit under the heading of “robustness”.

Smart Manufacturing

With the ability to utilize part manufacturing information from design all the way down to the shop floor, Smart Manufacturing by Siemens enables companies involved in the Aerospace and Defense industry to leverage:

• Automation to improve repeatability and flexibility and reduce rework and scrap.
• Multidisciplinary process planning to integrate electronic and mechanical systems and processes to build better quality, more complex products.
• Advanced manufacturing technologies such as additive and robotics to speed up production and lower weight and material usage.
• Continuously improve and optimize manufacturing processes through insights from IoT and data analytics.