Assessment of airframe-subsystems synergy on overall aircraft performance in a Collaborative Design

A Collaborative and Distributed Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) methodology is presented, which uses physics based analysis to evaluate the correlations between the airframe design and its sub-systems integration from the early design process, and to exploit the synergies within a simultaneous optimization process. Further, the disciplinary analysis modules involved in the optimization task are located in different organization. Hence, the Airframe and Subsystem design tools are integrated within a distributed overall aircraft synthesis process. The collaborative design process is implemented by making use of DLR’s engineering framework RCE. XML based central data format CPACS is the basis of communication to exchange model information between the analysis modules and between the partner organizations involved in the research activity. As a use case to evaluate the presented collaborative design method, an unmanned Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) configuration is selected. More electric sub-systems combinations based on the mission requirements are considered. The deployed framework simultaneously optimizes the airframe along with the sub-systems. DLR’s preliminary aircraft design environment is used for the airframe synthesis, and the Sub-systems design is performed by the ASTRID tool developed by Politecnico di Torino. The resulting aircraft and systems characteristics are used to assess the mission performance and optimization. In order to evaluate the physics based framework and system-airframe synergies, three case studies are considered: a) Subsystem Architecture’s effect on overall aircraft performance for a given mission and fixed airframe. b) Effects of variation of mission scenario on aircraft performance for a chosen subsystem architecture and fixed airframe. c) Optimization involving wing planform variables and subsystem architecture for a given mission.