Boom Supersonic made history on Jan. 28 when its XB-1 jet broke the sound barrier for the first time, reaching speeds of roughly 1,208km/h or Mach 1.122. 

The XB-1 is a technology demonstrator, meaning Boom Supersonic is testing it in order to validate the design and subsystems of the jet to pave the way for the company's Overture passenger aircraft. “XB-1’s supersonic flight demonstrates that the technology for passenger supersonic flight has arrived,”  said Boom founder and CEO Blake Scholl.

“A small band of talented and dedicated engineers has accomplished what previously took governments and billions of dollars. Next, we are scaling up the technology on XB-1 for the Overture supersonic airliner. Our ultimate goal is to bring the benefits of supersonic flight to everyone.”

Imagine traveling from New York to Rome in under five hours, compared to eight hours today. Flying at up to twice the speed of today’s passenger jets, Overture transforms multi-day business trips into single-day hops – unlocking new destinations and unique travel concepts. This is the vision of Colorado-based aviation company Boom Supersonic who is looking to make supersonic travel a reality by the end of the decade. This is being accomplished with Overture, the world’s only supersonic airliner in development.

“We believe in a future in which more people can go more places more often,” said Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic. “To do that we're going to make the planet dramatically more accessible by building flights that are not just faster but also more affordable, more convenient, and dramatically more sustainable.” “We want to completely remove sustainability as a barrier to travel,” said Scholl. “So we challenged ourselves to find a better way and Overture is not just going to be the fastest airliner but also the most sustainable – designed from the ground up to run on 100% sustainable aviation fuel." “What we're doing is really complex,” Scholl said. “We're building one of the most complex, safety critical machines ever created, and doing that from the ground up as a new company.

Using the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to Break Barriers

The Requirement: Boom needed a technology platform that could facilitate internal and external collaboration; deliver the environment and tools needed to efficiently collaborate with its value network around engineering data; and integrate 3D design with aircraft requirements, virtual modeling, and MBSE development and analysis. One that could scale with the company as it moves from design into production, enabling it to meet all its major milestones to manufacture and certify Overture.

The Solution: Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform, including CATIA for 3D modeling and ENOVIA for product data management, is the obvious choice. Boom believes the 3DEXPERIENCE platform promises to streamline collaboration throughout its value network and eliminate file-based data storage, which ensures real-time digital continuity. The 3DEXPERIENCE platform offers Boom true parametric modeling capabilities at a system level.

The Integration: “We're excited to be using the 3DEXPERIENCE platform because it allows not just our own engineers to work on the airplane but also brings our suppliers and our design partners into that same platform so that everyone's working on the same model of the airplane,” Scholl said. “Then, when we go to build the airplane, we know everything's going to fit correctly for the first time and be optimized across all the systems.”
For Boom’s engineers, adopting the 3DEXPERIENCE platform was quick and easy, and immediate benefits were realized. One of the biggest benefits to Boom is improved collaboration by combining processes and data into a single virtual environment. All Boom engineers can now work on the same live data set, no matter where they are located. 

The Extended Collaboration: Moreover, and just as critical, these benefits are not just felt by the internal team. The ability to model concurrently with suppliers allows Boom’s team to evaluate design decisions from different perspectives and enables the best path to drive the design.    

This external collaboration happens in a carefully considered and secure way. Boom, like all aerospace companies, is concerned about protecting its intellectual property (IP) when exporting certain files to external stakeholders. Boom used the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to segment data to interface suppliers into the product development without exposing the full aircraft IP. Boom also can create roles to control access to company information protected by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). 

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