Optimizing Families of Reconfigurable Aircraft for Multiple Missions

Aircraft with modular airframe components may offer significant flexibility in mission performance by enabling reconfiguration between sorties. This paper introduces an approach for optimizing a family of aircraft variants defined by a library of interchangeable components such as wings, tails, engines, and payloads. First, the combinatorial problemof composing interchangeable components into feasible aircraft variants and assigning the variants to missions is posed. Next, two methods are presented to determine optimal reconfigurable family designs. The methods are then applied to an example problem to define optimal families of modular unmanned aerial vehicles consisting of interchangeable wings and engines. The results indicate a rich trade space of family architectures and aircraft configurations that depends strongly on the type and diversity of the required missions.