Automatic Cabin Virtualization based on Preliminary Aircraft Design Data

Kurzfassung

Preliminary aircraft design and cabin design are essential and well-established steps within the product development cycle for modern passenger aircraft. In practice, the execution usually takes place sequentially, with the preliminary design defining a basic layout and the detail implementation following in a subsequent step. In order to enable higher fidelity assessment of the cabin early on in the design process, for example by means of virtual reality applications, this paper proposes an interface, which can derive detailed 3D CADgeometry of the fuselage from preliminary design data provided in the CPACS data format. This is a key step towards integration of cabin analysis, not only with respect to passenger comfort, but also manufacturability or crash safety, in automated collaborative aircraft design chains. Like the TiGL geometry library for CPACS,the interface presented acts as a parameter engine, which translates data from CPACS into CAD-geometry using the Open Cascade Technology library. The scope of TiGL is expanded significantly, albeit with an explicit focus on the fuselage, by including more details such as extruded frame and stringer profiles or extruded bulkheads. Furthermore, advanced knowledge management techniques are employed to detect and augment missing data. For virtual reality applications, triangulated representations of the CAD-geometry can be provided in established 3D exchange formats such as STL, thus providing an interface to common visualization platforms such as Blender. Additionally, a new evolution of the cabin definition in CPACS is presented, which can be enhanced using external models of components such as seats, hatracks or sidewall panels enabling detailed virtual mock-ups.