Safran Helicopter Engines (SAFRAN)

SAFRAN Helicopter Engines is a member of the Propulsion branch of the Safran Group and a leading supplier of systems and equipment for the Aerospace, Defence and Security markets. SAFRAN HE is the world leader in the design, production, sale and support of gas turbines for helicopters. As the leading manufacturer of helicopter engines, SAFRAN HE offers the world’s most comprehensive range of engines, strong co-operations with customers and closest customer service proximity.  

Both the Fluid Mechanics & Energetics group (MFE) and the Combustor Design Office (CDO) are involved in this proposal. The MFE group is in charge of developing CFD tools and computational methodologies to be used by all Safran HE design offices (combustor, turbines, compressors, exhaust and intakes, propellers…). The CDO team is responsible of the combustion system design, including simulation, experimental measurments at the combustor and engine test beds, CAD, definition of technological solutions and is in direct connection to the manufacturing team.

In CoE RAISE WP3 (Compute-Driven Use-Cases towards Exascale), the MFE group will collaborate with CERFACS and Bull-ATOS to provide a validated CFD tool (AVBP & AVBP_DL) to the CDO team which will exploit this latter for the simulation of hydrogen combustion in a helicopter combustor and compare this new approach with classical CFD modeling strategies. This will be a closed-loop work, since these simulations will be exploited to build a learning database of flame structures to be used in the Deep-Learning process of AVBP_DL. Safran HE will also be involved in WP5 (Business Development) to give an industrial view on the way AI techniques can enter concrete design processes, and what are the associated requirements. This will feed the business model and business plan proposed by other contributors to this task. Finally, Safran HE will communicate through publications on the use of AVBP and AVBP_DL for hydrogen combustion applications in WP6 (Outreach and Services).