Abstract
It is expected that aero engine businesses will develop radically new types of propulsion solutions to meet the new sustainability-driven targets. Consequently, to meet new conditions not previously encountered, both in design and in production, the structural components of the engines will also have to be radically different. Implications of this are significant for aero engine manufacturers. Production will need to respond accurately and flexibly to provide advanced engine structures to new engine designs. This makes the ability to trade and optimise the balance between functional performance and cost of realising them, critical. Furthermore, the time and accuracy of such investigations is a competitive factor. In this paper, a method is proposed and demonstrated for how weld manufacturability of structural aero engine components can be simulated and traded against performance already in the early phases of design.