Conceptual Airplane Design Systems

Abstract

A historic overview is given of commercial and academic airplane design systems. The most common airplane design systems used nowadays are DARcorporation Advanced Aircraft Analysis, DaVinci Technologies AirplanePDQ, OAD aircraft design software (ADS), Raymer RDS, and Pacelab APD. Aircraft conceptual and preliminary design systems are developed for the following benefits: reduced design time, as computer‐aided design methods can reduce design and development time, and replace tedious hand calculations; better product through improved design: more alternative designs can be evaluated in the same time span, which can lead to improved quality; reduced design cost: less training and less calculation errors leads to substantial savings in design time and related cost; and improved efficiency: the design engineer can avoid technically correct but irrelevant calculations on incomplete or out‐of‐sync information, particularly if the process enables robust geometry earlier. A description of knowledge‐based design systems is given. Although numerous advancements in knowledge‐based design have been achieved, development of such integrated knowledge‐based conceptual and preliminary airplane design systems is still in its infancy.

Towards the Design of Future Aircraft: A Critical Review On the Tools and Methodologies

“…Since 1970s, numerous overall aircraft design (OAD) programs have been developed at various universities. However many of them are not operational any more [100]. In this section, a selective of presentative OAD tools developed at NASA, DARcorporation, Raymer, Stanford University, MIT, RWTH Aachen, TU Braunschweig will be reviewed and discussed.…”

“…Users interact with the software to define initial low-fidelity geometrical and non-geometrical data, selecting global configurations such as wing type, tail, canard, control devices, and engine specifics. AAA has been validated across numerous research and industrial endeavors [100]. The tool applies semiempirical methods for analyzing aerodynamics, structure and weight, and stability and control.…”

Computational modeling of multipurpose amphibious aircraft Be-200

“…The paper [5] describes particularities of the aircraft design based on the lofting method. Quite a detailed description of modern automated design systems is given in the book [6]. Particularities of preliminary and conceptual aircraft design are given as well.…”