VICKSBURG, Miss. – In an effort to enhance acquisition programs for all branches of the U.S. military, a team of engineers and technical experts from the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) have developed a cloud-based digital engineering environment that includes specific hardware, a variety of design tools and access to high-performance computing.

This technology was put to use when the ERDC’s Information Technology Lab (ITL) was asked to help the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) accomplish their tasks for the B-52H Commercial Engine Replacement Program (CERP) – a modernizing effort to install new Rolls Royce F130 engines onto the 70-year-old B-52 bomber fleet. This update is projected to increase system reliability and significantly reduce current maintenance costs.

The B-52 first flew onto the military scene with the U.S. Air Force in June of 1955. With a wingspan of 185 feet, the long-range heavy bomber can travel 650 miles per hour at 50,000 feet while carrying up to 20 air-launched cruise missiles. However, at 70 years old, the aircraft is beginning to show its age, and replacement parts are extremely hard to find.

Between 1955 and 1962, a total of 744 B-52s were built, and today, only 76 are still in active use. The current Pratt & Whitney TF33 engines have been out of production since 1985, which has made it challenging for the Air Force to find replacement parts when repairs are needed. This has sidelined many B-52s over the years.

“Originally, the digital platform provided three different engine manufacturers a computational enclave that allowed them to separate their intellectual property and provide answers to Boeing and to the people at the AFLCMC on who they should pick for the CERP,” said Dr. Robert Wallace, lead technical director for ITL. “Once the Rolls Royce engine was selected, the AFLCMC office asked if they could continue using the environment for the continuation of the project.”

“Teams of all sizes can log into this digital engineering environment from wherever they are located, utilize the software and share data and information with their teammates,” Wallace added.

One of the primary tools deployed in this environment was the HPCMP CREATE™ software suite, a set of advanced computational engineering design and analysis tools developed specifically to improve the acquisition process. These tools were designed by ERDC-ITL team members in collaboration with other engineers from across the Department of Defense (DoD).

“The CREATE effort started nearly 15 years ago, and at the time, we had large supercomputers and a nice network to do a lot of good work, but we didn’t have the physics-based modeling and simulation tools needed to address these types of multidisciplinary problems,” said Dr. David McDaniel, associate director for CREATE, which is part of the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program. “It covers ground vehicles, ships, air vehicles, electromagnetics, antennas, and more.”

Using the CREATE software for the B-52 modernization effort has cut the costs and sped up the entire testing process by a full year.

“It is very expensive to perform traditional flight testing, find problems with the tests, go back to the beginning, make changes and flight test again,” said McDaniel. “The process is very inefficient and very expensive.”

CREATE includes multiple design and analysis tools, but the one most used by CERP has been CREATE-AV Kestrel. This program is the fixed-wing simulation tool specifically used to enable physics-based virtual prototyping and testing analysis for military aircraft design.

“Instead of having to be an expert, working in the CREATE applications is more general, which makes it easier for regular engineers to use – you don’t have to be a computational specialist,” said Jason Klepper, an engineer at Arnold Engineering Development Complex (AEDC) on Arnold Air Force Base in Tennessee.

The AEDC operates more than 90 aerodynamic tunnels, along with rocket and turbine engine test cells, ballistic ranges and other specialized units. When AEDC became a part of the CERP program, the size of the nacelles for the wind tunnel model were larger than typically tested at AEDC. Therefore, a new flow plug needed to be developed to accommodate the larger mass flow requirements for testing.

“AEDC had to develop a new flow plug to accommodate the larger airflows necessary for the nacelles in the wind tunnel,” said Klepper. “So, we used the CREATE tools to help optimize the design of the flow plug device pulling the airflow through the nacelle.”

Dr. Andrew Lofthouse, a computational fluid dynamics expert at the AFLCMC, has been working on this project since 2019.

“There is a big potential operational need to know how these new engines will impact the aerodynamics, including in a take-off configuration, so we need the biggest computers to simulate the best fluid dynamic models at the highest resolution,” said Lofthouse. “We use supercomputers to numerically simulate the detailed flow physics of different geometric configurations to compare the effects of the new engines on the overall aircraft aerodynamics.”

As of today, the new engines have successfully passed the key Preliminary Design Review, but there is still a good bit of work to do before the re-engined B-52 takes off.

When asked what excites him most about the B-52 project, McDaniel said, “When I see in the news that the Air Force is deploying B-52s overseas—to think that Jason and Andrew and many other tech professionals like that are using the CREATE program to develop tools and use their expertise to further that kind of capability is very exciting.”

Klepper and Lofthouse both agreed that being a part of this project is exciting, knowing that their work is having such a big impact on the world.

With the help of the digital engineering environment and specifically products like CREATE, ERDC’s ITL team of technical experts is helping the AFLCMC and Boeing see the future for the iconic B-52 more clearly.

Department of Defense (DoD) established the High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) is a multiservice effort and national asset that provides a comprehensive modeling and simulation ecosystem. The HPCMP integrates the supercomputing capabilities and computational science expertise that allow DoD scientists and engineers to conduct a wide range of Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) activities and amplify their creativity, productivity, and impact.