Multi-Domain Design Assessment for Aerospace Components Including Weld Accessibility

Abstract

Aeroengine manufacturers need to better include assessment of risk and cost for realising the novel products needed to meet the ambitions sustainability driven targets for air transport. Radical technologies are needed that simultaneously require critical manufacturing processes to be assessed already in conceptual design.In this paper, a multi-domain framework for conceptual design and evaluation is proposed that provide the ability to interactively explore the concepts that simultaneously allow a wider range of architectures can be assessed and still include weldability of the concepts.It has been demonstrated how high level, and function driven conceptual design alternatives can be modelled and evaluated to analyse risk and resilience of architectures. Geometrical concepts generated for the most interesting regimes using design of experiments covering a desired design space. For each CAD-model the welding process can be simulated to assess feasibility and lead time for welding, and return quantified results to be included in an integrated results data set for interactive decision making. The paper is the first report from a research project that improve concurrent design of product and production concepts.

Using DSMs in Functionally Driven Explorative Design Experiments – an Automation Approach

“…Recent research (Isaksson et al, 2021) has focused on connecting function models with geometry models, extending current Design Automation (DA) and Knowledge-Based Engineering (KBE) techniques. The next section focuses on reviewing such techniques.…”

“…Stepping into an aircraft engine, the capacity to adapt to e-system design and its operative conditions sets the focus on reliability and resilient design solutions. Secondly, even if a promising technology is chosen during design, the ability to optimize and balance it with other design objectives is not readily available (Isaksson et al, 2021). The consequence is a risk that the final design becomes highly sensitive to change and variation in loads and modifications at later phases.…”

Concepts of change propagation analysis in engineering design

“…Conversely, change may propagate from manufacturing to the component design, e.g. the design might need to change because a certain material is no longer available (Ahmad et al 2013), or to enable manufacturing system improvements such as better weld accessibility (Isaksson et al 2021). Similarly, to make production requirements feasible, it may be essential to adapt process parameters (Hoang et al 2017b, a), which are in turn dependent on other design parameters.…”

Function Driven Assessment of Manufacturing Risks in Concept Generation Stages

“…In order to achieve the desired sustainability goals (Seebode et al, 2012), significant and concentrated efforts have been put into projects such as the European Commission-funded program "Clean Sky" and its successor "Clean Sky 2" (Brouckaert et al, 2018). These initiatives are expected to be based on the integration of disruptive technologies on novel product architectures (Isaksson et al, 2021). However, before such novel product architectures are introduced, aerospace businesses must develop the capability to assess risks against the benefits in the early design stages.…”