Towards A Common Modeling Environment for Aircraft Power and Thermal Systems Design and Optimization: Introducing the Simulation Platform APTT-SP

摘要

Due to expanding availability of computing power, knowledge-based decision support is becoming more relevant in new areas, for example, software architecture design, engineering design, and more specifically, in aircraft design and acquisition. With the ever-increasing number and variety of scientific software, the reproducibility and reusability of software and models is becoming a growing concern. In aircraft power and thermal modeling and simulation, complexity can arise from the need for integration of multi-scale and multi-fidelity models, use of heterogeneous software tools, and collaboration between multi-disciplinary subject matter experts. Domain-specific simulation tools designed to model specific subsystems need to be compatible in order to model a larger complex system. Additionally, it has been recognized that customizable, open-source solutions to facilitate collaboration and reproducibility are highly desirable. In this paper, we introduce the Aircraft Power and Thermal Toolkit — Simulation Platform (APTT-SP). The motivation for the development of the integrated simulation platform APTT-SP, is to address the technical need for a common modeling and simulation environment for aircraft power and thermal model building, execution, optimization, verification and validation, trade space analysis, and knowledge-based decision support in the design of power and thermal engineering systems. APTT-SP has emerged as a one stop simulation platform for launch and storage of power and thermal modeling and simulation tools and provides benefits such as re-usability, reproducibility, repeatability, sharing, and record-keeping. APTT-SP is developed in Eclipse integrated development environment, leverages Sandia Analysis Workbench, and provides a selection of aircraft power and thermal models and simulation tools.