How Industry Concepts of Concurrent Engineering Enhance Aircraft Design Education

Abstract Two student projects are described including the intended goals, the approaches taken, the tools used, and what was learned from the exercises. An international collaborative teaching protocol between Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) was exercised in aircraft design education. Poignantly, a novel instructive design process using the analogue of contemporary concurrent engineering practices in industry was implemented. The idea was to strategically assign multi-disciplinary design tasks to each Partner University in accordance with their respective competencies. The university-industry coupling was initiated by request for proposals and corresponding marketing requirements and objectives produced by Bombardier Aerospace in Montreal, Canada. Two MATLAB TM-based tools were prominent in facilitating the capstone aircraft design projects. They included: Quick Conceptual Aircraft Research and Design, a computer-aided conceptual design engineering system; and TORNADO, a Vortex-Lattice code for computing aerodynamic characteristics. The result of the two exercises was found to benefit the participating industry, the educational establishments involved, and the students carrying out the projects.