CONCEPTUAL DESIGN OPTIMISATION OF A 'MALE' CONFIGURATION USING A FLEXIBLE SCALING TOOL

摘要

In the early design stages of a new aircraft,rnthere is a strong need to broaden the knowledgernbase about the evolving aircraft project, allowingrna profound analysis of the presented solutionsrnand of the design driving requirements.rnWith the presented methodology, a tool isrnprovided to help increase and improve thatrnneeded information, exemplified for a new unmannedrnMedium-Altitude Long Endurancern(MALE) aircraft configuration. The developedrnprogram system is open-structured, allowing therndesign engineer maximum flexibility in a firstrnstep-by-step analysis, before switching to thernautomated scaling and optimisation modes.rnIn an extended requirement model, performancernrequirements are represented alongrnwith other operational requirements. An aircraftrnmodel is introduced in sufficient detail for conceptualrndesign considerations. The step-by-steprnanalysis functions are presented. The computeraidedrnscaling methodology is explained, which,rncontrolled by an optimisation module, automaticallyrnresizes the aircraft model until it satisfiesrnthe requirements in an optimum solutionrnregarding a selectable figure of merit. Typicalrnresults obtained at the end of the scaling arerndiscussed together with knowledge gained alongrnthe process, and example results are given.