Application of probabilistic methods for the determination of an economically robust HSCT configuration

Abstract

This paper outlines an approach for the determination of economically viable robust design solutions using the High Speed Civil Transport (HSCT) as a case study. Furthermore, the paper states the advantages of a probability based aircraft design over the traditional point design approach. It also proposes a new methodology called Robust Design Simulation (RDS) which treats customer satisfaction as the ultimate design objective.RDS is based on a probabilistic approach to aerospace systems design, which views the chosen objective as a distribution function introduced by so called noise or uncertainty variables. Since the designer has no control over these variables, a variability distribution is defined for each one of them. The cumulative effect of all these distributions causes the overall variability of the objective function. For cases where the selected objective function depends heavily on these noise variables, it may be desirable to obtain a design solution that minimizes this dependence. The paper outlines a step by step approach on how to achieve such a solution for the HSCT case study and introduces an evaluation criterion which guarantees the highest customer satisfaction. This customer satisfaction is expressed by the probability of achieving objective function values less than a desired target value.

Metamodels for Computer-based Engineering Design: Survey and recommendations

“…Toward this end, RDS combines design of experiments and response surface metamodels with Monte Carlo simulation and Fast Probability Techniques [113] to achieve customer satisfaction through robust systems design [72]. RDS has been applied to the design of a High Speed Civil Transport aircraft [71,71] and very large transports [114]. RDS has also been used to study the economic uncertainty of the HSCT [115] and the feasibility/viability of aircraft [116].…”

“…x R Chi and Bloebaum [61] x x R Englund et al [62] x x 2nd x Gadallah and ElMaraghy [63] x x 2nd x x x S/N Giunta et al [64] x x 2nd x Giunta et al [65] x x x x 2nd x Healy et al [66] x x 2nd x x Hong et al [67] x x 2nd x x S/N Koch et al [68] x x 2nd x Korngold and Gabriele [69] x 2nd x Li et al [70] x 2nd x x S/N Mavris et al [71] x x 2nd R Mavris et al [72] x x 2nd R Roux et al [57] x…”

A stochastic approach to multi-disciplinary aircraft analysis and design

“…Since many of the topics discussed in this paper represent concepts with which the reader may not be familiar, a few key definitions are offered for clarity: Ambiguity: The un-described and vague (linguistically) portion of a design [1]. Ambiguity occupies the space complement to knowledge.…”

Reliability-Based Optimization of Civil and Aerospace Structural Systems

“…A generic framework for the stochastic multidisciplinary design has been proposed by Du and Chen [109] and Oakley [110]. For aircraft design, multidisciplinary approaches have been presented by Mavris and coworkers [111][112][113], accounting for various sources of uncertainties, such as modeling and economic variability, and aiming for system affordability. Uncertainty has been introduced primarily on the conceptual design level, where reliability analysis methods are combined with systemlevel deterministic analyses.…”