On April 26, 2023, at the invitation of the School of Management, Chief Engineer Ruan Hongze (in charge of safety and reliability) from the Shanghai Aircraft Design and Research Institute of Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, Ltd. (COMAC) and Deputy Chief Designer Si Jiangtao of COMAC CR929-600 delivered a joint report entitled Exploration and Practice of Civil Aircraft and System Development System Based on Systems Engineering at the School of Management, Chang’an Campus. The lecture was hosted by Professor Tian Qingfeng and attended by faculty members and graduate students of the School of Management.

Chief Engineer Ruan Hongze first introduced the technological development background of civil aircraft and the aircraft development process, emphasizing that development support technology has become an inevitable choice for large commercial aircraft. He then discussed the emergence of development assurance process technology for large commercial aircraft, focusing on structural safety (structural design and strength assessment) and system safety (system design and safety assessment) of such aircraft. Taking China’s homegrown large jetliner C919 as a typical case, he systematically elaborated on the key points of safety assessment during the development of large aircraft, highlighting the use of development plans as the starting point, taking the forward design and development process of aircraft and systems as the main line, emphasizing iterative trade-offs in the inheritance process, and focusing on communication and supervision with the external airworthiness review system.

In the final interactive session with students, Chief Engineer Ruan Hongze answered questions related to reliability in the field of systems engineering and explained the differences between data fusion in systems engineering and that in major engineering fields. Finally, Professor Tian Qingfeng from Northwestern Polytechnical University systematically summarized the future exploration and practical experience in the field of systems engineering.

Ruan Hongze is a Research Fellow and Chief Engineer of Safety and Reliability at the Shanghai Aircraft Design and Research Institute of COMAC. He has previously served as Engineer, Section Chief and Professional Chief Engineer of the Maintainability, Supportability, Testability, Reliability & Product Support Design and Research Department of the Shanghai Aircraft Design and Research Institute, as well as Deputy Director of the Characteristic Engineering Department of the Aircraft Architecture Integration Engineering Technology Institute and Assistant Chief Engineer of the C919 large passenger aircraft program. He has won one Gold Award of the Central Enterprise Youth Innovation Award, one Third-Class Award of the COMAC Science and Technology Progress Award, two Quality Technology Awards of the China Association for Quality, one First-Class Award and three Second-Class Awards of the Scientific and Technological Achievement Award of the Shanghai Aircraft Design and Research Institute. He has also published 2 monographs.

Si Jiangtao is a Research Fellow, Deputy Chief Designer of COMAC CR929-600 and President of the Intellectual Association. He graduated from the Department of Aircraft Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, majoring in aerodynamics. He has worked successively at the Xi’an Aircraft Design Institute, the First Aircraft Design Institute of AVIC I and COMAC. He has held positions including Deputy Chief Designer and Section Chief of the C919 program in the Overall Pneumatic Department of the Shanghai Aircraft Design and Research Institute of COMAC, Chief Designer of Aircraft Overall Pneumatic Design and Chief Engineer of the Aircraft Pneumatic and Energy Engineering Technology Institute of the institute. He has participated in the development of more than ten aircraft models including the Flying Leopard, KJ-2000, Y-20, ARJ21, C919 and CR929, and presided over the overall pneumatic design of the CR929 program. He has won one Second-Class Provincial and Ministerial Science and Technology Progress Award and holds 5 patents. He has also translated the book Sketch Design of Yak-42M and Yak-242 Aircraft.

Written by/Shen Weikang Reviewed by/Jia Ming