The Effect of Sub-systems Design Parameters on Preliminary Aircraft Design in a Multidisciplinary Design Environment

Abstract

The remarkable complexity of the aircraft design is due to several reasons and one of these is certainly the high number of completely different design disciplines involved in the process. Many efforts are spent to harmonize and optimize the aircraft design trying to consider all disciplines together with the same level of detail. Within the ongoing H2020 AGILE research, an aircraft MDO (Multidisciplinary Design Optimization) process is setting up linking several design tools and, above all, competences together. This paper focuses on the evaluation of the effects of the main on-board systems design parameters on the other disciplines. Starting from a baseline aircraft (AGILE DC1 regional turbofan), the effect of each parameters have been quantified in terms of variation of aircraft weight, fuel consumption and engine performance. This analysis represents a useful starting point to better understand the importance and the influence of novel On-Board Systems configurations, such as More and All Electric, to the overall aircraft design.