This conference paper was submitted for presentation at the NAFEMS World Congress 2025, held in Salzburg, Austria from May 19–22, 2025.

Abstract

In order to show how easy but dangerous your job can be this paper highlights some interesting problems and pitfalls from the day-to-day work of an aeronautical structural engineer. In a world focused on sustainability, low weight EVTOL and small aircrafts might become the future of air transportation. This is pushing the boundaries of design into new corners, so quality assurance needs special attention. As this market grows there is a high demand of fast studies, focused on topology optimization and very light aero structures. The time to market is significantly reduced, such that there is less and less time for checking and QA the FE model. There is a strong belief that automating the process, and especially the checks, can solve the QA problem and improve the process. But a machine can check what we already encountered or thought to be an error. What do we do for a new problem? Are we confident enough to let a machine to explore new problems that end up on an aircraft? It is proposed a short but mandatory checklist and the workflow to be followed in order to make sure that the end result FE model is going to the deliver a good quality and safe answer. It is essential that companies make use of their history and experience when it comes to the quality of the models. That is the starting point, which has to be respected by new people in the market, even if they have a new vision or if they are pressed by the new demanding deadlines. The prerequisites to ensure a good quality of the FE models are: - Building an internal procedure for quality assurance, adapted to the company specific and in accordance with existing guidance (e.g. EASA CM-S-014); - Having a QA Template or checklist; - Building up internal analysis templates for pre/post processing such that QA to be embedded in the process; - Use of SPDM to follow the process and create gateways for Quality checks; - Training of personnel to follow and understand the QA procedures; - Complex models to be accompanied by easy benchmark models that build understanding in thrust in the results; - Continuously develop the engineering judgement and understanding of results as the main tool. The new tools on the market are more user friendly. These enable people to take shortcuts. Very easy and fast, sometimes at the end of a click of a mouse button, the result is on your screen. Pictures or animations that can help engineers to take quick decisions. A complex problem that is solved by complex solvers using a very user friendly interface, means that the user has more time to check and educate himself into the complexity of the problem.