An Integrated Environment for Preliminary Aircraft Design and Optimization

Abstract

This paper presents the Multidisciplinary Integrated Conceptual Aircraft Design and Optimization (MICADO) environment that has been developed during the last years at the Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (ILR) of RWTH Aachen University. The MICADO environment allows for automated aircraft design and assessment with a minimum of user input, i.e. a set of top-level requirements and specifications. The homogeneous software environment allows for fast parameter studies and optimizations in a wide parameter space and with low computational effort. Due to the integrated design and assessment approach, variations of top-level requirements, local parameter changes as well as integration of new technologies or systems are captured into overall aircraft evaluation parameters such as block fuel or costs. The MICADO software architecture in terms of control and data flow, program structure and parameterization principles is presented. Further, the aircraft design and assessment methodology including the underlying models are discussed, as well as applications of MICADO for aircraft design studies and operational studies. Finally, functionalities and strengths of the proposed methodology are demonstrated by a case study, in which MICADO is used for the design and optimization of a conventional short-range aircraft. For the designed aircraft, variations of initial sizing parameters as well of Mach number and wing sweep angle are performed and overall aircraft design results are discussed.

Conceptual Design of Operation Strategies for Hybrid Electric Aircraft

“…It highlights the most relevant methods developed for the current hybrid electric propulsion applications instead of giving a general detailed description of the tool. Figure 3 describes the general approach of the modeling structure, which follows a typical aircraft conceptual/preliminary design logic [52][53][54][55]. Some important points are discussed in the following to better illustrate the features and modeling strategies.…”

Exploring Vehicle Level Benefits of Revolutionary Technology Progress via Aircraft Design and Optimization

“…In addition, the design tool is built to be able to incorporate multidisciplinary results for building surrogates, which can give reasonably accurate predictions at the overall aircraft level. Following a typical aircraft conceptual/preliminary design logic [30,[40][41][42]-especially the very comprehensive aircraft design platforms developed at the TU Braunschweig (PRADO tool [43]) and at the RWTH Aachen University (MICADO tool [42]) in Germany, some features and modelling strategies are illustrated as follows. It has to be noted that the tool developed within the EWL project has a very good compromise between complexity and fidelity levels, which is more suitable for aircraft technology assessment for such a joint research project as compared to other tools already being developed.…”

“…Besides, parameterization is also a necessity when we consider the further air transport level estimation of emissions, noise, direct operating costs, or life cycle costs, which are dependent on aircraft parameters and operation parameters. Currently, there are several prevailing ways used in industries and academia for aircraft parameterization [41,42], and most have the capability to work with the DLR CPACS data format [44,45]. In the present modelling, the parameterization method is also based on DLR CPACS format.…”

Geometry and Structural Modeling for High-Fidelity Aircraft Conceptual Design Optimization

“…Each Component instance computes the B-spline control points of its surfaces, which are then aggregated to define a global control point vector that provides a continuous representation of the aircraft OML. The interpolation of Primitive components enables continuous deformation with differentiability always satisfied, and this is one of the main distinguishing features compared to other geometry engines in the literature [16,17,18,19].…”