Landing gear design in an automated design environment

The design of the landing gear is one of the prime aspects of aircraft design. Literature describes the design process thoroughly, however the integration of these design methods within an automated design framework has had little focus in literature. Landing gear design includes different engineering disciplines including structures, weights,...

Synthesis of Novel Aircraft Concepts for Future Air Travel

In the last 60 years many new technologies have entered the aerospace industry, but the overall aircraft design remained virtually unchanged. If we compare an aircraft built in the 1960's with the latest generation, they look strikingly similar. Only small evolutionary changes entered the commercial aircraft market. A lot of these changes are...

A Semi-Analytical Weight Estimation Method for Oval Fuselages in Novel Aircraft Configurations

Research in aircraft design is focusing on novel aircraft configurations in search for a step change in terms of overall transport efficiency. Aircraft design relies heavily on empirical methods, so-called Class 2 methods, to evaluate the performance of a design. Since these methods are based on statistical data their validity is limited when...