A CONCEPTUAL DESIGN AND ANALYSIS METHOD FOR CONVENTIONAL AND UNCONVENTIONAL AIRPLANES

摘要

A design method is presented that has been implementedin a software program to investigatethe merits of conventional and unconventionaltransport airplanes. Design and analysis methodsare implemented in a design tool capable of creatinga conceptual design based on a set of toplevelrequirements. In contrast to established designmethods, emphasis is placed on designingunconventional as well as conventional airplaneconfigurations. A parametric fuselage primitiveand a parametric lifting-surface primitive havebeen defined. By combining various instancesof these primitives, airplane geometries rangingfrom blended-wing-body configurations to threesurfaceconfigurations can quickly be generated.Analysis methods have been developed/refinedsuch as to enable the (physics-based) disciplinaryanalysis of conventional and unconventional airplaneconcepts. Design rules have been implementedto automatically size the main airplanecomponents. This paper describes the workingsof the software tool, presents relevant validationstudies and showcases a comparison study betweenfive different airplane configurations.