Aircraft Design & Design Methodologies

Major technological advances in flight performance can be realized by new unconventional airplane designs. To support the development of such novel configurations, new design methodologies are required that go beyond statistical and analytical methods. To that extent, design support tools are developed at FPP that are able to sustain the evolutionary improvement of current aircraft design, as well as to support the investigation of novel aircraft configurations. Implementation of a multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) for a full aircraft design is an example of such a design methodology. At FPP we work on the development of design-oriented analysis modules as well as their integration into in-house design tools and their application to conventional and unconventional aircraft configurations. In addition, we continuously expand and improve the design tools to allow for novel aircraft configurations or the implementation of new technologies such as morphing structures or hybrid laminar flow control.

Aircraft Design Initiator

The Aircraft Design Initiator is a software tool that is under continuous development at FPP. The goal of the Initiator is to quickly conceive realistic aircraft designs to investigate the effect of new technologies and aircraft configurations. The Initiator distinguishes itself from other aircraft design programs by combining empirical models with numerical models to warrant reliable analysis results that are applicable to both conventional and unconventional aircraft configurations. The tool consists of a series of disciplinary analysis and sizing modules that are combined in an efficient framework. The individual analysis modules are continuously updated by improved analysis methods to enhance the reliability or flexibility of the Initiator.

The Initiator was initially conceived as part of the European project Aerodesign and has supported other European projects such as RECREATE and Smart Fixed Wing Aircraft. The Initiator can be used to assess the impact of small and large changes of the aircraft geometry on so-called key performance indicators. The latter include fuel efficiency, maximum take-off weight, life-cycle cost, and equivalent CO2 emissions. Recent research projects investigated the effect of cruise altitude on fuel burn, the effect of using liquefied natural gas as fuel on CO2 emissions, the effect of artificial stability on maximum take-off weight, and the effect of pulse-jet actuators on fuel efficiency.

Currently, the Initiator focusses on turbofan-powered civil transport aircraft. In the near future, this will be expanded to smaller aircraft (business jets) and aircraft featuring turboprops or propfans.

AGILE

Aircraft 3rd Generation MDO for Innovative Collaboration of Heterogeneous Teams of Experts

This EC sponsored project targets advanced multi-disciplinary optimisation of aircraft using distributed analysis frameworks. Advanced optimisation techniques and strategies will be developed in order to exploit available computing systems and to gain faster convergence to optimal solutions. Knowledge-enabled information technologies will be developed in order to support complex collaborative design process. The methods and tools that will be developed in AGILE will be tested and verified using realistic overall aircraft design tasks for conventional, strut-braced, box-wing and BWB configurations, including UAVs. The project is set up to proof a speed up of 40% for solving realistic MDO problems compared to today’s state-of-the-art. Airbus, Alenia, Bombardier, Fokker, Saab, NLR, DLR, ONERA, Noesis and KE-works are just some of the 20 partners which will collaborate with the TU Delft in the coming 3 years, providing opportunities for MSc and PhD projects.

For more info: http://www.agile-project.eu/

IDEaliSM

Integrated and Distributed Engineering Services Framework for MDO

IDEaliSM (Integrated and Distributed Engineering Services Framework for MDO) is an international research project where Dutch, German, Belgian, Norwegian and Spanish representatives from the aeronautic and automotive fields, both from industry and academia, aim at drastically improving the time-to-market and development cost of high-tech structures and systems. The idea is to bring a radical change in the Product Development Process by enabling continuous integration of distributed and highly specialized development teams. To this purpose, the IDEaliSM consortium will work on the generation of a new distributed flexible and service-oriented development framework for multi-disciplinary design and optimization that is capable of integrating people, process and technology. Software solutions for knowledge management & engineering, process integration, automation and optimization will provide the enabling technology to develop such framework.

The Chair of Flight Performance and Propulsion (FPP) will contribute to the project with the investigation and development of advanced design methods & knowledge based tools to support multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO). The FPP’s objectives and expectations within IDEaliSM are the following:

  1. Development of an MDO advisory system to lower the accessibility level of MDO technology in industry. This system will advise non-expert MDO users on the selection of a suitable MDO architecture. Then it will support the user in setting up a given MDO system and, finally, it will enable its dynamic integration in a commercial PIDO (Product Integration and Design Optimization PIDO) system
  2. Development of domain specific languages to support modelling and automatic generation of KBE applications for aircraft and wire-harness design
  3. Investigation of the opportunity of a new generation KBE system development

For more information:

Dr.ir. Roelof Vos