Bristol’s key role in accelerating the development of next-generation low-carbon aircraft has been boosted by a new partnership between the city’s Centre for Modelling and Simulation (CFMS) and sector giant GKN Aerospace.
Independent digital engineering research and technology consultancy CFMS and GKN Aerospace, which has three bases in Bristol including a £32m global technology centre, already had a long-standing relationship built on a shared focus on advancing digital manufacturing. 
Now GKN Aerospace is to join CFMS’ board alongside aircraft manufacturer Airbus and aero-engine giant Rolls-Royce – both with major plants in Bristol.
CFMS chairman Prof Sir Iain Gray, a respected figure in the aerospace sector having been managing director Airbus UK in Bristol, said: “We’ve been working with GKN Aerospace for a number of years to accelerate the development of aircraft manufacturing technologies and the next generation of low-carbon flight.
“Welcoming GKN to the board of CFMS is a natural evolution of our relationship, underpinning our commitment to aerospace, but also bringing together industry-leading digital engineering expertise which is being transferred to a growing portfolio of diverse, high-value sectors – including energy, infrastructure, space and transport.” 
GKN Aerospace vice president technology Max Brown. pictured, added: “CFMS has been a key digital partner to GKN Aerospace for several years and we are delighted to step up our engagement and help steer the future of the organisation.
“It is vital that we enhance the UK’s digital engineering skills, and CFMS’s expertise in advanced simulation, robotics and autonomous systems, plus access to its unrivalled compute power, mean it is at the forefront of this essential work.”
GKN Aerospace’s 10,000 sq m global technology centre at Filton is a collaborative research and development centre working with industrial partners, universities and the government while its nearby manufacturing plant is its largest advanced aerostructures facility, specialising in the assembly of major leading and trailing-edge wing sub-assemblies, as well making wing structural components for civil and military aircraft.
Its major customers including BAE Systems and Airbus, with key contracts on world-leading single-aisle airliners, including the Airbus A320, and wide-bodied aircraft including Airbus’s A330 and A350XWB ad Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, along with military planes such as Airbus’s A400M, Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning, and the Saab JAS 39 Gripen.
GKN Aerospace also has a plant at Western Approach, Avonmouth, where it manufactures composite wing spars and fixed trailing-edge assemblies for the A350XWB and A400M.
CFMS was launched at UWE Bristol in 2009 by six founding companies – Airbus, BAE Systems, WilliamsF1, Fraser Nash, MBDA and Rolls-Royce – with a key ambition to use high performance computing to speed up, by one million times, calculations required to simulate the interaction of liquids and gases with surfaces.
It later moved to the Bristol & Bath Science Park at Emersons Green, where it continues to act as a test bed for businesses of all sizes, offering ‘technology watching’ to help companies shape their futures and reduce the risks industry has to take when it wants to innovate.
The formal link-up with GKN Aerospace follows a £2.4m investment in CFMS from the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology to develop a unique and highly adaptive high-performance computing (HPC) system; as well as funding from the UK Space Agency’s Space Cluster Infrastructure Fund for a pioneering pilot data centre capability for next generation space engineering, robotics, simulation and AI.
