Construction of Parametric System for Aircraft Conceptual Design Based on Simulink

Abstract

Aircraft conceptual design is a complex system engineering, which makes it easy for aircraft designers to create confusion when constructing analysis systems. In order to solve the difficult problem of complex system modeling, we thought of making the flow diagram of aircraft conceptual design more intuitive and concrete than the ordinary method when design an abstract system. Simulink's block diagram modeling and online data transfer methods can visually develop complex systems, which are usually aimed at specific systems in most of related studies, like areoengine containing concrete component which can be constructed to block diagram framework in a so-called component level. Although the aircraft conceptual design system is an abstract system, we still can divide it into several parts based on its different sub-tasks which is like the component of the concrete system, greatly reducing the difficulty of modeling. In this paper, the aircraft conceptual design process was modularized to a framework using block diagram, and an intuitive aircraft conceptual design system according to the block diagram design frame was constructed through the visual development function of Simulink. According to the requirements of each stage of the flight mission envelope, an aircraft conceptual design parametric system based on constraint analysis subsystem and mission analysis subsystem is constructed, which advances layer by layer internally, merges and unifies externally, and finally completes the construction of the system. The developed system includes constraint analysis subsystem and mission analysis subsystem, which can analyze and calculate the overall parameters in aircraft conceptual design. In the process of system construction, we will encounter some problems due to negligence, but because we build the block diagram in a step-by-step design method, the structure is also very clear, it is easy to find the wrong module and correct it quickly. To evaluate the accuracy of the system, with the data of Airbus A318 as a reference, the design requirements were set, and the overall parameters of the conceptual design of the aircraft including takeoff weight, wing area, takeoff thrust, fuel amount, were calculated, and compared with the relevant parameters of A318, the deviation was within a reasonable range. It can be seen that after the framework of the aircraft concept design system is constructed, the aircraft parametric concept design system can be constructed intuitively through Simulink's block diagram modeling translation.