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How the Aix-Marseille Université aerospace facility’s technology-enhanced degree program is made possible with BigRep’s large-format additive manufacturing systems.

On Marseille’s busy south-France coast, Aix-Marseille Université, one of the largest universities in France with 8,000 staff and 80,000 students, has developed a unique accredited degree programs in aerospace engineering and maintenance by combining two novel technologies: large-format additive manufacturing and virtual reality.

Xavier Bonnardel is a doctor of aeronautics, a professor at the University of Aix-Marseille, as well as founder and director of Aix-Marseille’s technical aeronautical training school, POLYAERO. Bonnardel created POLYAERO in 2008 and, in 2016, helped establish its aeronautical formation center in the luscious Gap Tallard airfield – a 2500 m2 specialized facility for the technologically advanced POLYAERO programs. Students from all over the world enroll in the exclusive program every year, drawn by the modern tools it uses to provide a unique hands-on education, a BigRep industrial 3D printer among them.

In 1994, as France’s shipping regulations around aircraft maintenance made it difficult for universities to meet state criteria, Bonnardel took on the challenge of developing an effective university program to meet the new restrictions. In a partnership with Airbus, Bonnardel and Aix-Marseille developed their program which later became nationally recognized, making POLYAERO the first school in Europe with a part 66 C regulation-compliant bachelor program in aircraft maintenance.

Beyond simply meeting state regulations, Bonnardel and POLYAERO are no strangers to the rapidly evolving demands in education as schools strive to remain aligned with modern industries like aviation and their ever-changing technologies. The school has partnered closely with notable aerospace companies from around the world including Airbus, Dassault, and Safran to ensure they’re always at the forefront of innovation in aerospace. It’s with these close partnerships that POLYAERO has created their present exclusive program that leverages modern technology to give students unmatched hands-on experience, making them incredibly valuable to POLYAERO’s industrial partners.

POLYAERO functions with apprenticeship-style programs – not unlike the German “Duale Ausbildung” vocational training – operating in a cooperative system with leading international aerospace companies. By working with industrial giants like Airbus and Dassault, students rotate every two months between studying at POLYAERO’s Gap Tallard campus and working for their industrial employer. Positions in the programs are strictly limited to the amount of student interns POLYAERO’s industrial partners can handle, meaning at any given time POLYAERO has only about 100 students from approximately 1,000 annual applicants.

Technology-Assisted Learning in Aerospace

As a university institution, POLYAERO and Aix-Marseille simply don’t have the budget for a hangar full of the modern aircrafts that students will be working with after graduation. But without hands-on experience students are ill-prepared to enter the workforce, forcing aerospace companies to expand their training and onboarding to get new entrants up to speed. Bonnardel decided that modern technology and some simple program logistics offered a path around these limitations and, expanding on his existing 25-year relationship with Airbus, began implementing modern technology into the learning process to create a virtual reality assisted learning program.

Airbus invested in the program early on, providing POLYAERO with digital mockups of their H175 helicopter to jump start their virtual aeronautic collection. They also helped to develop the program logistics and the use of its associated technologies. In fact, Airbus was excited enough about the program to place two highly qualified Airbus employees at POLYAERO’s facilities who still work out of the Gap Tallard campus today. In turn the school continues to develop and manage the program, constantly investing in facilities to support their modern technology. Due to its high technological integration, the campus maintains a variety of technology-learning facilities: 3D labs and simulation rooms like the “Virtual Reality Cave,” a dedicated space for students to safely use the virtual reality systems with two massive projected screens that allow instructors to follow their students’ performance.

Unfortunately, the first attempt at the program didn’t satisfy POLYAERO. Students received detailed learning into the practices and processes of aeronautical maintenance but didn’t quite get the hands-on experience that Bonnardel and Airbus were looking for the program to provide.

“We began to work with virtual reality, but we realized that it wasn’t very good - it was too much like a video game, not realistic enough. But Airbus wanted to development this technology and we worked together to do it.”

Xavier Bonnardel, Founder and Director, POLYAERO