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Throughout an aircraft development process, the conceptual design phase is an extremely important milestone; hence, the quality and success of this step directly affect the overall cost and lead time of the project. Because of this fact, the purpose of this study is to provide outputs and suggestions to the designing engineer regarding the requirements for reducing overall design time as well as costs and creating an ideal design at the early phases of the project by optimizing the aircraft development process.

The system has been prepared parametrically and presents some performance specifications for the aircraft in the early phases of the design, for example, coefficients for lift C_L as well as drag C_D and weight as well as fuel estimations. The software uses a combination of well-known design techniques within just one platform in contrast to many other applications. Because of this feature, it is not needed to use different sub-platforms which would require an appropriate environment and even though would lead to complications with regard to the connectivity. The system also presents relevant information about the aircraft performance like velocity versus load factor (V-n) diagrams, maximum turn rate of climb, turn rate and climb angle graphs in contrast to many other open-source conceptual design platforms.

In this study, authentic General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon and McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle data were used as input to the system, and advanced geometric and/or performance graphs were obtained and compared to the literature where a good agreement of the results was observed. These results with regard to the aircraft performance are typically product specific and quite rare in the literature. These data obtained by use of the software during the aircraft design are, thus, of major interest, especially for the design of new aerospace platforms. In this study, all of these graphs (especially the remarkable V-n diagram) are obtained on one platform.

The aircraft conceptual design and analysis system software provides information and suggestions regarding the requirements for reducing the overall design time, reducing the design costs and creating an optimized design at the early phases of a project by optimizing the aircraft development process within just one convenient, that is, user friendly, platform, where it uses a combination of varying methodologies. Besides presenting one interface, which is quite typical for conceptual design tools, it allows applications of methods like vortex lattices and finite differences for obtaining aerodynamic performance parameters.

The purpose of this paper is to promote the opportunities of open source software (OSS) development in aeronautics. Using the development of an open source framework for conceptual aircraft design as an example, this paper discusses how an inter‐organizational collaboration between industry and academia can build an environment for multi‐disciplinary aircraft design projects.

The paper takes the form of a literature study and comparison of software tools.

The open source model can facilitate the emergence of a large inter‐organizational community in aeronautics for developing a comprehensive software framework.

Developing a general OSS framework for conceptual aircraft design has the potential of attracting a large community for inter‐organizational collaboration on software tools for a multi‐disciplinary optimization (MDO) environment.

Using the concepts of open source in aeronautics has the potential to improve the collaboration among industry and academia on developing software tools for an MDO environment.

This paper aims to introduce the take-off and landing performance analysis modules of the software library named Java toolchain of Programs for Aircraft Design (JPAD), dedicated to the aircraft preliminary design. An overview of JPAD is also presented.

The calculation of the take-off and landing distances has been implemented using a simulation-based approach. This expects to solve an appropriate set of ordinary differential equations, which describes the aircraft equations of motion during all the take-off and landing phases. Tests upon two aircraft models (ATR72 and B747-100B) have been performed to compare the obtained output with the performance data retrieved from the related flight manuals.

The tool developed has proven to be very reliable and versatile, as it performs the calculation of the required performance with almost no computational effort and with a good accuracy, providing a less than the 5 per cent difference with respect to the statistical trend and a difference from the flight manual or public brochure data around 10 per cent.

The use of a simulation-based approach to have a more accurate estimation of the ground performance with respect to classic semi-empirical equations. Although performing the simulation of the aircraft motion, the approach shown is very time-saving and can be easily implemented in an optimization cycle.

The purpose of this study is to develop and describe a process which can be applied to develop new methods in the context of preliminary aircraft sizing in a successful and efficient way.

The tasks to development new aircraft sizing methods are systematically analyzed. In particular, repeating and nonrepeating tasks and common or unique tasks. Then ordered in a sequence and described generically.

A development process for new aircraft design methods which are necessary for new technologies or configurations is introduced and explained step by step.

Introducing the capability to deal with new technologies or configurations, aircraft design tools or aircraft concepts requires new sizing methods.

The paper presents a systematic approach which can be used to develop a great amount of new sizing methods with a comparable usability and quality standard in an efficient and effective way.

The purpose of this paper is to make an analytical comparison of two vertical tail models from a structural point of view.

The original vertical tail design of PZL-106BT aircraft was used for Computer aided design (CAD) modeling and for creating the finite element model.

The nodal displacements, Von-Mises stresses and Buckling factors for two vertical tail models have been found using the finite element method. The idea of a possible Multidisciplinary concept assessment and design (MDCAD) concept was presented.

The used software analogy introduces an idea of having an automated calculation procedure within the framework of MDCAD.

The aircraft used for calculation had undergone a modification in its vertical tail length, as there was an urgent need to calculate for the plane’s manufacturer, PZL Warszawa – Okecie.

The goal for this paper is to bring the easy‐to‐use geometry drawing software RDS to a “solid” mesh, which could be analyzed and simulated in CEASIOM, to enhance both CEASIOM and RDS's capabilities.

The RDS‐SUMO interface is developed based on the feature that both RDS and SUMO define their geometric model using cross‐sectional information, i.e. their “universe” shapes are close to each other.

The translation is automated and allows the engineer to easily modify and augment the geometry in the process. Two test cases are shown, with their high quality Euler mesh and CFD computations. The A321‐look‐alike test case tests the mesh quality for transonic aerodynamics, such as high‐speed trim and drag divergence; the twin‐prop asymmetric aircraft is a “diffi+cult” non‐conventional configuration analyzed for yaw stability in one‐engine out mode.

This paper shows that the CFD solutions based on solid grids could be obtained once the design is proposed and the RDS wire‐frame model is available. The aerodynamic properties can then be predicted in early design stage, which is very efficient for preliminary aircraft design.

This fast meshing tool could obtain “working” grids of a new design within hours.

The purpose of this paper is to present the status of the on-going development of the new computerized environment for aircraft synthesis and integrated optimization methods (CEASIOM) and to compare results of different aerodynamic tools. The concurrent design of aircraft is an extremely interdisciplinary activity incorporating simultaneous consideration of complex, tightly coupled systems, functions and requirements. The design task is to achieve an optimal integration of all components into an efficient, robust and reliable aircraft with high performance that can be manufactured with low technical and financial risks, and has an affordable life-cycle cost.

CEASIOM (www.ceasiom.com) is a framework that integrates discipline-specific tools like computer-aided design, mesh generation, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), stability and control analysis and structural analysis, all for the purpose of aircraft conceptual design.

A new CEASIOM version is under development within EU Project AGILE (www.agile-project.eu), by adopting the CPACS XML data-format for representation of all design data pertaining to the aircraft under development.

Results obtained from different methods have been compared and analyzed. Some differences have been observed; however, they are mainly due to the different physical modelizations that are used by each of these methods.

This paper summarizes the current status of the development of the new CEASIOM software, in particular for the following modules: CPACS file visualizer and editor CPACSupdater (Matlab) Automatic unstructured (Euler) & hybrid (RANS) mesh generation by sumo Multi-fidelity CFD solvers: Digital Datcom (Empirical), Tornado (VLM), Edge-Euler & SU2-Euler, Edge-RANS & SU2-RANS Data fusion tool: aerodynamic coefficients fusion from variable fidelity CFD tools above to compile complete aero-table for flight analysis and simulation.

The purpose of this paper is to present the development of an optimal design framework for high altitude long endurance solar unmanned aerial vehicle. The proposed solar aircraft design framework provides a simple method to design solar aircraft for users of all levels of experience.

This design framework consists of algorithms and user interfaces for the design of experiments, optimization and mission analysis that includes aerodynamics, performance, solar energy, weight and flight distances.

The proposed sizing method produces the optimal solar aircraft that yields the minimum weight and satisfies the constraints such as the power balance, the night time energy balance and the lift coefficient limit.

The design conditions for the sizing process are given in terms of mission altitudes, flight dates, flight latitudes/longitudes and design factors for the aircraft configuration.

The framework environment is light and easily accessible as it is implemented using open programs without the use of any expensive commercial tools or in-house programs. In addition, this study presents a sizing method for solar aircraft as traditional sizing methods fail to reflect their unique features.

Solar aircraft can be used in place of a satellite and introduce many advantages. The solar aircraft is much cheaper than the conventional satellite, which costs approximately $200-300m. It operates at a closer altitude to the ground and allows for a better visual inspection. It also provides greater flexibility of missions and covers a wider range of applications.

This study presents the implementation of a function that yields optimized flight performance under the given mission conditions, such as climb, cruise and descent for a solar aircraft.