event

PhD Proposal by Anusha Harish

Primary tabs

Anusha Harish
(Advisor: Prof. Dimitri Mavris]

will propose a doctoral thesis entitled,

Methodology for Aircraft Architecture Selection & Design Trajectory Optimization

On

Tuesday, February 2 at 11:00 a.m.
BlueJeans  https://bluejeans.com/665757071

Abstract
Growing environmental concerns have led to aviation agencies around the world such as ICAO, IATA and ACARE to set aggressive targets to reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions by the year 2050. Several aircraft technologies and concepts have been proposed, such as electrified propulsion, hydrogen-based propulsion, blended wing body and distributed propulsion, as solutions. These form a vast architecture space with numerous possible combinations. This raises the question of identifying promising architectures that can meet the specified environmental goals. However, radically new designs are generally high risk and incur heavy development costs, and therefore, need to be thoroughly tested and infused incrementally over time. With several revolutionary concepts and future technologies to choose from, there is an opportunity here to not only identify which technologies and concepts to incorporate into the aircraft design but also when to introduce them in the given timeframe. This could lead to an optimal design trajectory. A design trajectory, here, refers to the sequence of design or architectural changes and technology infusions over time.

The objective of this research is to conceive a methodology for aircraft architecture exploration and design trajectory optimization. There are 5 key aspects to this problem – (1) generation of feasible alternatives, (2) evaluation and optimization of the architecture design space, (3) selection of architecture designs based on multiple criteria that include both quantitative as well as qualitative metrics, (4) forecasting the aircraft performance over time with technology uncertainty, and finally (5) design trajectory optimization. This research will provide a systematic method to model and compare different architectures at the same level of detail, aid in understanding the tradeoffs between environmental benefit and cost, and estimate the potential of designs with uncertain technology to meet future goals. Additionally, using the proposed methodology, the sequence and the timeframe for the introduction of revolutionary design changes and technologies can be planned in a way such that the associated risks and costs can be traded favorably with environmental benefits.

 

Committee

  • Prof. Dimitri Mavris – School of Aerospace Engineering (advisor)
  • Prof. Daniel Schrage – School of Aerospace Engineering
  • Dr. Jonathan Gladin – Research Engineer II, School of Aerospace Engineering

Status

  • Workflow Status:Published
  • Created By:Tatianna Richardson
  • Created:01/19/2021
  • Modified By:Tatianna Richardson
  • Modified:01/19/2021

Categories

Keywords