Expanded MDO for Effectiveness Based Design Technologies: EXPEDITE Program Introduction

摘要

Aircraft multidisciplinary analysis and design optimization (MADO) has enjoyed recent widespread adoption in industry. This shift has not been brought about by profit-driven companies genuflecting to MADO pundits, but by a realization that current and future technology advances, competition, and design requirements are driving the necessity of the simultaneous optimization of the complete system in the early stages of the design process that MADO offers. The Air Force Research Laboratory's (AFRL) EXPanded MDO for Effectiveness based Design TEchnologies (EXPEDITE) program intends a rapid improvement in industry's early conceptual MADO capabilities in several key areas: state-based modeling, effectiveness based design, path dependency, transient operation of systems and subsystems, uncertainty quantification, utilizing high performance computing, cost, and the assessment of manufacturing issues. All of these areas are intended to be evaluated as early as possible in the design process. EXPEDITE has been devised to cause a transformation in the MADO field by demanding the development of these key area capabilities and the exercise of the resulting technologies to a relevant system design problem. The identified key areas that are part of EXPEDITE have been carefully chosen by AFRL with an eye to future design requirements and upcoming technologies slated for introduction on future air vehicle platforms.