A Component-Assembly Architecture for Conceptual Aircraft Design

Legacy conceptual aircraft design and mission analysis environments have primarily supported parameterizations for conventional general aviation and commercial transports. To accommodate modeling of unconventional configurations and off-nominal flight mission profiles, two methods have been used to perform parametric studies: creating independent copies of the code for specific vehicles or creating a large, monolithic vehicle with conditionals to turn features on or off. With the former approach, it is harder to maintain traceability and code quality. The latter approach makes it difficult to flexibly develop architecturally novel vehicles or performance criteria, limiting the capability to rapidly explore non-typical vehicles and operational flight profiles. In this work, we describe development of a fundamentally different approach using a new component-assembly architecture for conceptual aircraft design software. In this approach, vehicles and missions are assembled from interchangeable, physics-based components using a declarative, hierarchical framework reflective of the engineering approach to conceptual aircraft design. This modeling architecture will allow engineers to model new aircraft concepts including hybrid-electric, blended-wing-body, and other advanced configurations with minimal software development effort, while preserving full traceability and expanding tool capabilities.