Multidisciplinary General Aviation Aircraft Design Optimizations Incorporating Airworthiness Constraints

Abstract

In this paper, aircraft design is explained as a Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) which incorporates airworthiness requirements. In a preliminary sizing phase, preliminary aircraft configurations are defined from a user-requirements analysis and conventional conceptual design process. Conceptual design and analysis modules are developed and integrated into a multidisciplinary optimization to improve the aircraft conceptual design process. Multidisciplinary feasibility (MDF) is established by implementing a multidisciplinary analysis which couples a preliminary sizing module with a conceptual design and analysis module. During an aircraft application certification phase, design constraints are established by a Design-Certification Related Table (DCRT) and selected by investigating aircraft safety requirements including Korea Airworthiness Standards (KAS) and Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR). By carefully selecting design variables, a multidisciplinary design optimization is performed. The case study is general aviation aircraft design to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of rapid aircraft conceptual design. Minimization of take-off gross weight of general aviation aircraft is performed and the design result shows the feasibility and effectiveness of the aircraft conceptual design process. I. Introduction ecently in Korea, the aircraft industry has been trying to replace flight aircraft with general aviation aircraft for personal air vehicles and training aircraft for airline pilots. For this reason, airworthiness has gained greater importance recently. The logical and systematic aircraft design process has been developed to rapidly obtain an optimum configuration at an early stage of aircraft design. Generally, aircraft design optimization based on semiempirical equations has been well-established since the beginning of aircraft design. These methods, based on Jan Roskam 5 , Raymer 6 methods, GASP 7 , and ACSYNT 8 , have been used extensively and efficiently to rapidly acquire the results of analysis in MDO frameworks. However this aircraft design process does not consider airworthiness requirements at the conceptual design stage. Airworthiness is necessary during the entire aircraft design process to ensure hazard identification and risk management. A certification of airworthiness shall be issued by the contracting state on the basis of satisfactory evidence that the aircraft complies with the design aspects of appropriate airworthiness requirements In this paper, the proposed approach is an aircraft design process incorporating airworthiness requirements. The scope of application for airworthiness requirements is set and design constraints are generated by analyzing the relationship between design variables and certification requirements. Analysis modules are well-developed and integrated into the multidisciplinary optimization environment to refine the aircraft configuration during synthesis of the conceptual design. Eventually, the Multidisciplinary Feasibility technique is applied to resolve the coupling variable in the conceptual aircraft design synthesis process. The case study is the design of a regional jet aircraft to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of rapid aircraft configuration generation