Interface-Driven Multidisciplinary Design of Large-Scale Aircraft Structures

Under the proposed research an Interface-Driven Design Manager (IDM) for CAD packages will be developed to greatly reduce the design cycle time for aircraft structures. The IDM represents a first attempt to fully integrate powerful new interface element and design management technologies into the CAD environment. These emerging technologiies have the potential for making multidisciplinary design optimization of large-scale structures practical and for providing new levels of design automation that are currently not possible. For example, interface element technology will allow complex airframe structures, such as a wing box, to be rapidly assembled from a database of pre-meshed 'stock' components, without concern for mesh compatibility. Interface elements can also be used for global-local analysis to provide higher fidelity results during conceptual design, without large increases in the computational cost. The IDM design will be centered on an object-oriented representation of components that will allow for the eventual integration of physics-based manufacturing and costing models.