Creation of innovative concepts in Aerospace based on the Morphological Approach

Abstract

The development of innovative aircraft configurations can be an important contribution to achieve the emission reduction goals set for the aviation industry. However, current common aircraft conceptual design processes only allow the consideration of a limited number of initial configurations thus leaving possibly more efficient solutions out of scope. A significantly wider range of aircraft configurations can be taken into account by applying the Morphological Analysis. After a brief presentation of its historical background and actual applications in other domains, this article focuses on the use of this method and its benefits in aerospace. The summary and comparison of several applications in the field of aircraft design show that these still require a higher level of formalisation and robustness. For this purpose, the main steps required to integrate morphological analysis into the aircraft conceptual design phase based on the Advanced Morphological Approach are identified. These are the definition of the morphological matrix along with the evaluation criteria, the obtaining of option evaluations, filtering the impossible solutions and exploration of the solution space.

Structured Expert Judgment Elicitation in Conceptual Aircraft Design

“…The MA has been applied in conceptual aircraft design in different forms and contexts, discussed and compared with the AMA in detail in Reference [2]. For example, the Technology Identification, Evaluation and Selection method by Mavris and Kirby [10] uses the MM for impact estimation of technologies and the search for their optimal combination for improved resource allocation.…”

“…Such an approach often implies the consideration of a limited number of initial ideas resulting from earlier designer experience or collective multidisciplinary brainstorming [1]. When designing new aircraft generations however, one should acknowledge that the optimal solution integrating certain disruptive technologies may be left out of scope [2]. Furthermore, one should consider that an early concept fixation reduces the room for later design adjustments, also associated with additional costs [1,3].…”

“…For this reason, the enhancement of the initial AMA represents a multi-stage project, visualized in Figure 1. The first stage was dedicated to the definition of the objectives and benefits of the AMA, the overview of other work using the MA in Aerospace, as well as the AMA positioning in the scientific context, presented in Reference [2]. Then, the problem structuring, uncertainty modeling and the main data flow was establishes in the next stage, shown in Reference [4].…”

Sensitivity Analysis and System Attribute Importance for Conceptual Aircraft Design with the Advanced Morphological Approach

“…This output paves the way for further application of MDAO methods for parametric optimization within the discovered design subspace. The positioning of the method in the scientific context and its comparison to similar approaches is discussed in Reference [16].…”