New collaborative centre for ‘virtual engineering’ at Daresbury laboratory

The 'Virtual Engineering' Centre (VEC), which will be led by the University of Liverpool in partnership with the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the Northwest Aerospace Alliance and industry, will bring together virtual engineering activities and joint research programmes across the sector and between industry and academia. The VEC has been made possible by £2.5 million from the Northwest European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), £1.18 million from the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) and £1.64 million from the University of Liverpool. STFC is hosting the centre at Daresbury Laboratory and is providing £200,000 of support through access to its large computational science and engineering machines and to its scientists' expertise in specialist software development. 'Virtual Engineering' (VE) involves integrated product/process modelling and the creation of virtual prototypes, It will form the basis of all future business in the aerospace sector. VE will explore solutions to many important engineering issues such as meeting the upcoming requirement to cut airliner fuel consumption by up to 50% by exploring improvements to the design of aeroplanes and their engines. Major aerospace companies and contractors see the development of the VEC as critical to the survival of the region's aerospace cluster as it provides a cost effective method of presenting future options to the customer and capturing their requirements. As yet, suitable, integrated VE tools and techniques have not yet been successfully implemented within single projects or companies, or across the whole lifecycle and the supply chain, which is a major barrier to organisations adopting the technology. The VEC aims to address this by bringing together the public and private sectors. The centre will act as: • A physical virtual engineering centre which will contain 'best practice' virtual engineering facilities that display integrated, interactive simulation and modelling software across the full range of virtual capabilities. • A research partnership that will add value to existing research activities within the region by providing a commercially relevant focus. • A knowledge transfer centre to increase awareness and give potential users an opportunity to 'try before they buy' so that they can become more confident of the business advantages that can accrue from using VE tools. • An educational centre to help meet the current skills shortages in VE in the UK.