Rune Aero has revolutionized its plane improvement course of utilizing an interactive digital wind tunnel powered by Physics AI, reaching an 80% discount in early design prices whereas doubling payload capability and reducing gasoline consumption by 50%.
The groundbreaking digital twin know-how combines Luminary Cloud’s Nvidia CUDA-X-accelerated CFD simulations with an Nvidia Omniverse Blueprint for actual time computer-aided engineering digital twins. In the end engineers can observe aerodynamic results immediately as they modify designs. This transformative strategy has compressed what historically required months of iterative bodily testing right into a steady, real-time optimization course of for the autonomous cargo plane startup.
The corporate made the announcement at Nvidia’s GTC 2025 in San Jose, California.
AI Physics Transforms Plane Economics with Actual-Time Design Optimization
Based in 2023, Rune Aero is growing a sustainable and autonomous plane for the rising middle-mile air cargo market. As a brand new startup, they’re embracing Physics AI, a fashionable strategy to speedy design exploration. Rune Aero’s adoption of the digital wind tunnel demonstrates how aerospace design engineers can shortly analyze many plane design prototypes, iterate designs, and visualize the influence in actual time.
By performing digital wind tunnel testing earlier within the design course of, Rune Aero dramatically reduces future technical threat and prices in comparison with relying solely on standard bodily wind tunnel exams.
The corporate stated the outcomes are transformative: 70% discount in working prices for cargo operators by optimized aerodynamics and gasoline effectivity, doubled payload capability, and 50% decrease gasoline consumption. For operators, this interprets to double-digit profitability will increase that essentially change air freight economics.
Luminary Cloud developed the interactive digital wind tunnel by combining its GPU-native CFD solvers leveraging Nvidia CUDA-X libraries, the PhysicsNeMo AI coaching framework, and Omniverse visualization API to create digital twin environments that ship quick design suggestions. This know-how stack makes different digital twin environments attainable, with the flexibility to include real-world knowledge into the Physics AI platform.
“AI Physics models are essential for real-time interactive engineering analysis and design, but require tremendous amounts of data,” stated Tim Costa, senior director CAE EDA and quantum at Nvidia, in a press release. “Luminary Cloud’s accelerated CFD solver allows customers to generate the high-fidelity data needed to train the underlying AI physics model in Nvidia PhysicsNeMo in a matter of hours.”
“It is exciting to work with aerospace companies like Rune Aero that are willing to adopt new design optimization techniques. By quickly running a large database of simulations and creating Physics AI models, Rune Aero engineers can arrive at a feasible design faster to solve important regional air transportation problems,” stated Juan J. Alonso, CTO Luminary Cloud, in a press release.
“At the early stages of aircraft development, getting fast, accurate, and cost-effective design feedback is essential. Luminary’s virtual wind tunnel allows Rune Aero to test configurations earlier in the process, reducing our early development costs by over 80% compared to traditional wind tunnels and enabling faster, smarter design decisions,” stated Nadine Auda, cofounder of Rune Aero, in a press release. “Rune’s optimized aircraft configuration resulting from these tests improves aerodynamic lift-to-drag ratio, combined with advanced propulsion, this doubles payload and range while cutting fuel burn by 50%, ultimately lowering operating costs for our customers.”
Luminary Cloud and nTop at this time additionally introduced a brand new integration with Nvidia PhysicsNeMo that reduces physics-based AI design optimization from weeks or months to mere hours. By seamlessly connecting nTop’s parametric geometry technology, Luminary’s GPU-native simulation and simulation administration platform, and Nvidia PhysicsNeMo by way of NIM microservices, engineers can now create and analyze lots of of design variations in a single day—a course of that beforehand took weeks to months of guide effort throughout disconnected methods.
