The project focuses on the development of what is referred to as the Behavioural Digital Aircraft (BDA). The BDA can be viewed as a federated system that will comprise all the modeling and simulation capabilities and services required to enable a more complete, mature and reliable definition of the behavioural, functional and operational aspects of an aircraft and constituent systems. The project will move beyond modeling and simulating of parts of an aircraft or engine, instead looking at the complete aircraft and its behavior.

Airbus is coordinating the project which began with a kick-off in Toulouse in May 2009. The project involves 59 partners from 13 countries and a total budget of 55 million euros over 3 years. CRESCENDO stands for Collaborative & Robust Engineering using Simulation Capability Enabling Next Design Optimization. The ambition of the CRESCENDO consortium is to make a step change in the way that modeling and simulation activities are carried out, by multi-disciplinary teams working as part of a collaborative enterprise, in order to develop new aeronautical products in a more cost and time efficient manner.

Eurostep has previously participated in the very successful aeronautics research project VIVACE (2004?2007). The CRESCENDO project is co-funded by the European Commission under Grant Agreement n° 234344 within the 7th Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)".

"We are very proud to be part of CRESCENDO", says Håkan Kårdén, CEO Eurostep Group. "In VIVACE we were part of developing the VEC Hub (Virtual Enterprise Collaboration Hub) based on Share-A-space and in CRESCENDO we look to further develop these ideas with very qualified end users. We certainly enjoyed the spirit in VIVACE and look forward to working together with the leading European aerospace organisations", ends Mr Kårdén.