An Integrated and Parametric Environment for Generation, Selection and Evaluation of New Architectures at a Conceptual Level: Application to the Environmental Control System

Abstract

As aviation's environmental impact becomes more and more worrying, designers are looking for innovative and more efficient subsystem architectures. To decrease design cost, the objective is to improve the requirements flow-down as well as their traceability throughout the design process. This work reviews previous work on the matter, and presents a systematic and rigorous methodology that helps the designers to generate, evaluate, compare and test architectures at a conceptual design level. The necessary tools and methods which have been implemented in a single environment are presented and applied to the Environmental Control System (ECS). A new bleed-less and more electric architecture has been developed and its performance has been assessed by a modeling and simulation environment. The latter includes inlet design, engine modification, cabin airflow characterization as well as a weight balance and an economic impact assessment.