Challenges of Aircraft Design Integration

Abstract : The design of a modern airplane brings together many disciplines: structures, aerodynamics, controls, systems, propulsion with complex interdependencies and many variables. Recent aircraft programs, such as Bombardier's Continental Jet program use participants located around the world and selected for their cost, quality and delivery capability. These participants share the risk on the program and must therefore be fully implicated in the design. A big challenge is to provide information on current design configuration simultaneously to all disciplines and all participants in the appropriate format. Another challenge of multidisciplinary optimization is to bring together technologies and methodologies of various disciplines in a way that is both practical and inclusive of the expertise that must accompany these individual technologies. This paper discusses progress made to address these challenges, streamline the aircraft design process and implement multidisciplinary optimization in an effective manner. Initiatives include: implementation of the Bombardier Engineering System (BES) and of an MDO software environment (VADOR), linking of aerodynamic and structural design and analysis codes, validation of advanced wing design methods and calibration of viscous flow analysis and drag prediction methods.