Digital Twin for the Ultra 2XL Heavy Lift UAS in Development

Phenix Solutions has been awarded a United States Air Force Phase II contract for digital engineering to support Military Airworthiness Certification.

The Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Autonomous Systems Technology Office (AST) is focused on accelerating the development and deployment of a transformative vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. To complete these goals, Phenix will create a digital twin of their Ultra 2XL Heavy Lift UAS (unmanned aerial system).

Digital engineering is essential to the mission as it helps meet the commitment to airworthiness by capturing, organizing, tracking, analyzing, and validating representative UAM system architectures and requirements. This digital twin tool will allow Phenix to create trustworthy data in digital testing, modeling, and analysis which further broadens the application of the Ultra 2X aircraft. These Digital tools are the future of aviation.

Under the Digital Engineering effort the Phenix Solutions team will take a deep dive into a single aircraft critical system scenario and its architecture to enable certifying bodies and authorizing Military Airworthiness Authorities the ability to speed up the certification process.

In this approach, Digital Twins will be created with sufficient fidelity to enable simulation of a single Critical System Scenario with the goal of measuring scenario performance under varied environmental conditions to rule out certain cyber or behavioral results. Outcomes of this work include generating evidence which can be used to support package submissions for certification, airworthiness, and/or authority to operate.

Phenix Solutions has worked with The US Air Force Agility Prime program for over 4 years. This contract is one of many that continue to help Phenix Solutions grow to meet both The US Air Force’s, and civilian needs – moving forward, the digital twin is set to build another layer of safety and reliability.