Vertical Aerospace partners with Dassault Systèmes to Accelerate VX4 Flight Testing and Development

UK-based Ver­ti­cal Aero­space will expand its deploy­ment of Das­sault Sys­tèmes’ 3DExperience plat­form to sup­port its flight test­ing and devel­op­ment pro­gramme for its VX4 elec­tric air­craft.

By lever­ag­ing ‘vir­tu­al twin’ tech­nol­o­gy, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space will be the first cus­tomer to take its air­craft from design through to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion all on the 3DExperience plat­form on the cloud.

Das­sault Sys­tèmes has signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MoU) with Ver­ti­cal Aero­space to fur­ther col­lab­o­rate on a shared vision for the future of sus­tain­able urban air mobil­i­ty.

Ver­ti­cal aims to start com­mer­cial flights of its VX4 eVTOL air­craft by 2025 by lever­ag­ing the vir­tu­al twin tech­nol­o­gy of the 3DExperience plat­form to pre­pare for flight test­ing in 2022 and flight cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in 2025.

Das­sault Sys­tèmes will enable mod­el-based cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to enable con­tin­ued opti­mi­sa­tion of its air­craft design and accel­er­ate its route to cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, by adopt­ing mod­el based cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to syn­er­gise vir­tu­al and phys­i­cal test­ing while main­tain­ing the high lev­el of gov­er­nance required by cer­ti­fi­ca­tion author­i­ties.

While Ver­ti­cal is already lever­ag­ing Das­sault Sys­tèmes’ vir­tu­al twin tech­nol­o­gy to sup­port the design of its air­craft, both com­pa­nies will now look to sup­port future man­u­fac­tur­ing oper­a­tions by cre­at­ing vir­tu­al twins of indus­tri­al sys­tems to enable a more effec­tive and sus­tain­able way to pre­pare for pro­duc­tion ramp up at scale, ensur­ing right-first-time and on-time deliv­ery to cur­rent and future cus­tomers.

Ver­ti­cal Aero­space pres­i­dent Michael Cer­ven­ka com­ment­ed: “We’re pleased to build on our part­ner­ship with Das­sault Sys­tèmes by explor­ing new ways to inno­vate across our cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es.

“The 3DExperience plat­form will sup­port all phas­es of the prod­uct life cycle, which is fun­da­men­tal to our goal of rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing the way we trav­el in a more sus­tain­able world.”

Das­sault Sys­tèmes EuroNorth man­ag­ing direc­tor John Kitch­ing­man added: “Ver­ti­cal Aero­space has grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly since we first start­ed work­ing togeth­er in 2018, and is now a glob­al play­er.

“This mile­stone will set the stan­dard for the devel­op­ment of eVTOLs and their deploy­ment, as part of a green­er urban air mobil­i­ty strat­e­gy. This excit­ing part­ner­ship is a clear match for our 3DExperience platform’s capa­bil­i­ties, which will be lever­aged as quick­ly and effec­tive­ly as pos­si­ble across Ver­ti­cal Aerospace’s busi­ness.”

The VX4 will be oper­at­ed by Vertical’s broad cus­tomer base, includ­ing major air­lines, heli­copter oper­a­tors, tourism groups and busi­ness avi­a­tion.

In July, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space part­nered with Bab­cock Inter­na­tion­al to explore new appli­ca­tions of the VX4 for estab­lished air­line cus­tomers includ­ing Vir­gin Atlantic, air­craft lessors such as Avolon, and heli­copter and tourism oper­a­tors such as Bris­tow and Ibero­jet.

At the same time, Ver­ti­cal Aero­space con­firmed it had deliv­ery slots and pre-deliv­ery pay­ment com­mit­ments from Amer­i­can Air­lines.