The AeroGrid project aims to create a permanent and practice-oriented grid infrastructure to facilitate co-operation between large-scale research institutions, industry and university research in the field of aeronautics. Compared to other industry sectors, a significant proportion of aeronautics research takes place in public institutes and organisations. Collaboration in this community is already very intensive, but still operates on somewhat basic communication technologies.

Swiftly applying knowledge gained in fundamental research at universities and large-scale research institutions to production processes is decisive to the ability of German aeronautics companies to innovate. Moreover, areas of strong international competition, such as turbomachinery development, are subject to constant market pressures to increase economy, efficiency and flexibility. At the same time, any communication infrastructure must meet the high security requirements of the industry. These issues correspond to the objectives of grid research, so the use of this technology promises great potential for improvement.

The work performed in the DGI integration project D-Grid and the InGrid and MediGrid community projects in the fields of security, infrastructure and middleware forms an excellent basis for the service scenarios suggested in AeroGrid.

Similar co-operative structures to those examined in AeroGrid can also be found in numerous research collaborations between industrial and public partners. The AeroGrid project was originally to include further examples from the field of aeronautics research with dedicated application scenarios, and its transferability to other subject areas seems evident. The AeroGrid concept is therefore carefully designed to create a highly generic solution and adapt it to the requirements of the project’s application scenarios only at clearly defined points.

The main focus of the AeroGrid project is on its relevance to practical application. This is reflected in a long-term service architecture that includes end users, service and technology providers. For example, the project partners MTU and DLR are already among T-Systems’ most important customers today, ensuring that the results of the project are permanently transferred to productive use after the project comes to a close, and supporting the project partners’ commitment to do so. AeroGrid is therefore intended to serve as the basis of a business concept for the wider marketing of HPC resources for solving complex engineering applications (particularly analysis and simulation).