Computational Design Synthesis of Aircraft Configurations with Shape Grammars

Abstract

Today, a majority of the produced aircraft share a common baseline design although unconventional designs have shown to be advantageous in certain cases. Using computational design synthesis a constrained solution space can be automatically generated and a high number of design candidates can be quickly explored without fixation on common designs. In this paper, the authors present and discuss a formal, three-dimensional spatial grammar to create different aircraft configurations that adhere to given design constraints. The grammar is built around a case study, the recreation of historic design proposals for a commercially successful, unconventionally configured aircraft, the Lockheed P-38. The results show that the developed 3D spatial grammar is not only able to computationally recreate the six design candidates that were part of the historic designs proposal but to generate further 14 feasible configurations and parametric variants by exploring the solution space more freely and thoroughly. Further, the use of the grammar for computational synthesis of other aircraft designs is discussed.