"The IMG4 project CRESCENDO addresses the Vision 2020 objectives for the aeronautical industry by contributing significantly to the fulfilment of three specific targets of the aeronautical industry’s Strategic Research Agenda. CRESCENDO will develop the foundations for the Behavioural Digital Aircraft (BDA), taking experience and results from VIVACE, and integrating these into a federative system and building the BDA on top of them. Main components of the BDA are: the Model Store, the Simulation Factory, the Quality Laboratory, and the Enterprise Collaboration Capabilities. It will be validated through use cases and test cases concerning “Power Plant Integration”, “Energy Aircraft”, “Thermal Aircraft” and “Value Generation” design problems and viewpoints during the preliminary design, detailed design, and test and certification phases of a generic aircraft product life-cycle. The BDA will become the new backbone for the simulation world, just as the Digital Mock-up (DMU) is today for the Product Life-cycle Management (PLM) world. This is considered a challenging area for research and innovation for the next decade. Hence, the CRESCENDO results will provide the aeronautics supply chain with the means to realistically manage and mature the virtual product in the extended/virtual enterprise with all of the requested functionality and components in each phase of the product engineering life cycle. CRESCENDO will make its approach available to the aeronautics supply chain via existing networks, information dissemination, training and technology transfer actions. The project will be organised into six subprojects: four technical and business-oriented subprojects, one “Enabling Capabilities” subproject which will deliver the BDA and a sixth subproject, responsible for consortium management and innovation issues. CRESCENDO will bring together 59 partners from industry, research institutes, universities and technology providers."