New Bristol project has designs on the future

A new venture by major Bristol firms including Airbus and Rolls-Royce which aims to improve design processes has started in Bristol.

The Centre for Fluid Mechanics Simulation (CFMS), also includes BAE Systems, Fraser-Nash, an engineering consultancy, and MBDA, the missile maker, with support from other organisations, including universities and Microsoft.

The venture's six partners, including the Williams Formula One team, have equal ownership in a centre that will allow them to pool computing resources and speed up the design process.

It will enable them to calculate how design changes will alter the performance of a product in a matter of days rather than over several weeks – or months, if they use a wind tunnel.

Airbus said that in the past, if it wanted to fully model a new wing design, it would take two weeks of continuous computing time on rented super-computers.

It hopes that the new centre will cut that time to a few days.

The Williams Grand Prix team also uses computer-aided design to create new cars, but the power required to assess how these changes would affect racing performance can be huge.

As well as paving the way to better products, the research programme also aims to bring significant improvements in environmental impact. The partners have invested an initial £8 million to set up the centre, with a further £8m from the Government.

Neil Scott, Airbus vice-president of engineering, said: "It can take weeks of processing work to assess the impact of changes to designs and we are looking to do it in days, instead.

"Processing in parallel allows us to do more in less time."

He added: "If Williams had to rely on wind tunnels to do all of their testing, then it would take the team at least half the season to make one change."