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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.

Unlike conventional aircraft, birds can glide without a vertical tail. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence of dihedral angle spanwise distribution on lateral-directional dynamic stability by the simulation, calculation in the development of the bird-inspired aircraft and the flight testing.

The gliding magnificent frigatebird (Fregata magnificens) was selected as the study object. The geometric and mass model of the study object were developed. Stability derivatives and moments of inertia were obtained. The lateral-directional stability was assessed under different spanwise distributions of dihedral angle. A bird-inspired aircraft was developed, and a flight test was carried out to verify the analysed results.

The results show that spanwise distribution changing of dihedral angle has influence on the lateral-directional mode stability. All of the analysed configurations have convergent Dutch roll mode and rolling mode. The key role of dihedral angle changing is to achieve a convergent spiral mode. Flight test results show that the bird-inspired aircraft has a well-convergent Dutch roll mode.

The theory that birds can achieve its lateral-directional stability by changing its dihedral angle spanwise distribution may explain the stability mechanism of gliding birds.

This paper helps to improve the understanding of bird gliding stability mechanism and provides bio-inspired solutions in aircraft designing.

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 paper aims to promote the development of intelligent materials and the 4D printing technology by introducing recent advances and applications of additive layered manufacturing (ALM) technology of intelligent materials and the development of the 4D printing technology. Also, an arm-type ALM technology of shape memory polymer (SMP) with thermosetting polyurethane is briefly introduced.

This paper begins with an overview of the development and applications of intelligent materials around the world and the 4D printing technology. Then, the authors provide a brief outline of their research on arm-type ALM technology of SMP with thermosetting polyurethane.

The paper provides the recent developments and applications of intelligent materials and 4D printing technology. Then, it is suggested that intelligent materials mixed with different functional materials will be developed, and these types of materials will be more suitable for 4D printing.

This paper overviews the current developments and applications of intelligent materials and its use in 4D printing technology, and briefly states the authors’ research on arm-type ALM technology of SMP with thermosetting polyurethane.