20 years of CPACS: A Brief History and Future Vision of Establishing a Common Language for Aircraft Design

Abstract

In 2004, researchers from the DLR research project TIVA began to develop a standardized description of conceptual aircraft design parameters. The idea was to implement a central data interface that would serve as a single source of truth, thereby simplifying the communication between disciplinary experts and tools, and increasing the robustness of a design process by avoiding errors due to misinterpretation of data. The Common Parametric Aircraft Configuration Schema was born under the acronym CPACS. Since then, CPACS has become the de facto standard in aircraft design, not only providing detailed descriptions of complex aircraft architectures at component level, but also covering the air transportation system as a system of systems. To mark the 20th anniversary of the data model, this paper sheds light on the development path of CPACS, which is characterized by an increasing transition from technical implementation to practical applications. Some pioneering research projects (e.g., TIVA, FREACS, AGILE, EXACT, Impact Monitor, and others) will be presented, which all are enabled by the CPACS design framework, consisting of the data model itself, the software libraries TiXI and TiGL, and the distributed integration environment RCE. In this context, the paper will not only show how design experts benefit from CPACS when participating in highly multidisciplinary and international teams, but will also look at the lessons learned from such projects to identify solutions for more effective tool integration, user training and support. A roadmap for the future development of CPACS outlines near-term enhancements, such as additional propulsion maps, more sophisticated weight and balance analysis, or enhancements to the corresponding data libraries.