Multidisciplinary Design of Flexible Aircraft

An MDO advisory system supported by knowledge-based technologies

Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) can aid designers to improve already mature design solutions, as well as to explore innovative, complex engineering products. It is a methodology, complete with mathematical formulations, that assists in the optimization of a complex product, whilst considering and exploiting discipline interactions....

Knowledge based engineering to support aircraft multidisciplinary design and optimisation

Development of an optimization framework for landing gear design

An opportunity was identified to improve the traditional landing gear design process. Especially in the conceptual design phase, lots of man-hours are consumed by making the same calculations over and over again, for different concepts. Often, an existing gear is therefore used as initial starting point, to simplify the design process. This...

Development and Implementation of a Cost Assessment Methodology for Multidisciplinary Design Optimization of Aircraft

Wing aerostructural optimization using the Individual Discipline Feasible architecture

At present, on the aviation market a need exists for lighter and more efficient aircraft than the ones dominating the airspace today. Beside the reduction in operating costs and air pollutants of these new generation aircraft, this reduction in fuel use can result in several advantages with respect to the performance of the aircraft like...

Combined Aerostructural Wing and High-Lift System Optimization

Current wing design processes are strongly governed by cruise design requirements. This approach to wing design leaves little room for high-lift device design optimization where trade-offs may be required between cruise wing and high-lift wing design. Moreover, the optimization of high-lift devices typically focuses on optimizing flap/slat...

Supporting MDO through dynamic workflow (re)generation

The use of advancements in computing technology has enabled designers to perform more thorough and more detailed design studies. Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) architectures provide users with guidelines on how to structure their MDO problem, including the linking of disciplines and how to perform the optimization. However, complex...

Development of surrogate-based multidisciplinary optimization methodology with flutter constraints for aircraft conceptual design

Aircraft concepts with high aspect ratio wings have been investigated more extensively in the recent past, as such configurations would reduce the induced drag significantly. At the same time, the high aspect ratio challenges the wing’s aero-structural stability (flutter). Therefore there is a need to perform aero-structural analysis already...

Multidisciplinary Design Optimization in the Conceptual Design Phase: Creating a Conceptual Design of the Blended Wing-Body with the BLISS Optimization Strategy

Traditionally, the aircraft design process is divided into three phases: conceptual, preliminary and detailed design. In each subsequent phase, the fidelity of the analysis tools increases and more and more details of the design geometry are frozen. In each phase a number of design variants is generated, fully analyzing them with the tools...

Development of a knowledge-enabled tool repository to support automated generation of multidisciplinary design optimization workflows

Wing Shape Multidisciplinary Design Optimization

Multidisciplinary design optimizations have shown great benefits for aerospace applications in the past. Especially in the last decades with the advent of high speed computing. Still computational time limits the desire for models with high level of fidelity cannot be always fulfilled. As a conse- quence, fidelity is often sacrificed in order to...

Conceptual Design of Blended Wing Body Airliners Within a Semi-automated Design Framework

Blended wing body aircraft represent a paradigm shift in jet transport aircraft design. Stepping away from the conventional tube-and-wing philosophy, they promise benefits over existing or future conventional aircraft. The most significant challenge with the concept is the increased coupling between aircraft design disciplines that has...