Case Study: Airbus cuts months off development and validates complex A380 fuel management system with MathWorks Model‑Based Design

Airbus Develops Fuel Management System for the A380 Using Model-Based Design

Airbus needed a reliable, verifiable fuel management system for the A380 that could safely manage 11 tanks, 21 pumps, 43 valves and complex failure scenarios while resolving ambiguity in thousands of written requirements. To address this, Airbus turned to MathWorks and its Model-Based Design tools—notably Simulink and Stateflow (with MATLAB)—to represent the functional specification, validate requirements earlier, and simulate multiple simultaneous component failures.

MathWorks’ toolchain was used to build reusable control‑logic and parameterized plant models, generate desktop and HIL simulators, and run large-scale Monte Carlo testing (100,000 simulated flights over a weekend on a 50‑worker cluster). The MathWorks-based approach cut integration time from as much as nine months to under one month, saved three months on HIL commissioning, enabled reuse across development, handled 3–4× greater system complexity without adding staff, and helped accelerate subsequent A350 development by about one year.

Airbus

Christopher Slack

Computational Analysis Expert in Fuel Systems