Experts unite to speed up engineering with quantum technology

Leading technology experts in Britain have been working together to transform how we design aircraft and ships, exploring the use of quantum computers to potentially shrink elements of design timelines significantly.

Designing critical structures like wings and propellers requires simulating how air or water flows around them. This is a difficult task that demands huge amounts of computing power before going into physical wind tunnel testing.  

Aegiq, BAE Systems, the National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) and NVIDIA have worked closely to test if quantum algorithms can improve these complex simulations on computers, we rely on today, then bring a transformational improvement on future quantum computers. The time taken to move to physical testing could then be significantly reduced. The project was awarded through the 2025 STFC Cross Cluster Proof of Concept: SparQ Quantum Computing Call.

Quantum technology offers to expand the application areas that can be accelerated with computation, by exploiting effects like superposition. The project has determined exactly what resources are needed to speed up aerodynamic design and make the engineering process more efficient.

Callum Duncan, Head of Quantum Applications at Aegiq, highlighted the potential impact of this partnership.

"With the expert knowledge and guidance from BAE Systems, this project has delivered actionable insight into how future fault tolerant quantum computers can have a transformational impact on advanced manufacturing industries," he said. "Accelerating our libraries with the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform for quantum-classical computing, utilising NVIDIA DGX Spark and data centre NVIDIA AI infrastructure, we can already scale codes to consider billions of points, which starts to become meaningful for aircraft simulation. Combined with support from NQCC and their access to Aegiq and other quantum hardware we can estimate both quantum and classical resources needed to solve CFD simulation and address significant pain points of the aerospace industry."

Pierre Moinier, Technologist at BAE Systems said  “This project has provided a strong foundation for identifying key challenges and development priorities, while also offering valuable insight into the expected timelines for delivering impactful quantum CFD capabilities.”

“This four-way collaboration has the potential to accelerate real-world impact, demonstrating how algorithms, GPU clusters, and quantum hardware can work together to tackle some of the most challenging problems in CFD,” said Dr Simon Plant, Deputy Director for Innovation, NQCC. “It highlights the critical importance of access to hardware, central to NQCC’s mission, to accelerate these advanced use cases.”

“Aegiq’s use of CUDA-Q and DGX Spark to develop novel quantum applications shows the importance of accelerated computing for quantum computing research,” said Sam Stanwyck, Director of Quantum Product at NVIDIA, “A key part of Aegiq’s forward-looking work has been honing applications within the hybrid quantum-classical systems that CUDA-Q platform is built for.”

By focusing on a simple problem, the flow around a 2-dimensional aerofoil, the team built a complete pipeline for the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations that scales to billions of mesh points using NVIDIA DGX Spark and NVIDIA DGX H100 through the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform. The result is an architecture which is inherently quantum-ready, and capable of leveraging future quantum processors as these grow in both size and reliability, offering a credible path to quantum advantage in CFD.

This collaborative project is helping to inform the future of engineering design. The innovations developed here could eventually help other important sectors that rely on complex calculations such as climate change, clean energy, and life sciences.