The European Space Agency (ESA) has signed a contract with Siemens, Europe's largest industrial automation company, to develop aerospace design and production software for metal 3D printing.
Siemens will participate in the two-year Design4AM project with the Belgian aerospace company Sonaca. It is reported that the project is funded by ESA and the Belgian Federal Office for Science Policy (Belspo) and aims to design comprehensive software for 3D printing of lightweight metal parts suitable for the aerospace industry. The software will be based on Siemens NX and adopt the architecture of Siemens digital innovation platform. It will also be equipped with related design and production tools such as generative design, predictive analysis, process simulation and production preparation.
Didier Granville, Siemens RTD project manager, said: "Working with Sonaca will help us better help ESA use additive manufacturing to improve performance structures to withstand the powerful forces generated during space satellite launches."
Pedro Romero Fernande, General Manager of the Aerospace Division of Sonaca, said: "Our extensive aerospace experience combined with Siemens software technologies (Generation Design, Automatic Topology Optimization and Additive Manufacturing Process Simulation) allows engineers to explore hundreds of design options in normal time , And then test their various physical conditions for the best design solution. "
To achieve interstellar missions, ESA is aggressively applying 3D printing technology to its space projects.