Conceptual Airplane Design Systems

Abstract

AbstractA 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; andimproved 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.