Student Name: Nitya Maruthuvakudi Venkatram

Advisor: Dr. Dimitri Mavris

Milestone: PhD Thesis Proposal

Degree Program: Aerospace Engineering

Title: Intent-Conditioned Trade-Space Exploration and Decision Support for Early-Stage Aerospace System Design

Abstract: Early-stage aerospace design is the period during which fundamental architectural choices are made under the greatest uncertainty. The decisions made in this phase, covering performance budgets, structural concepts, and propulsion configurations, are rarely substantially revised thereafter, yet the processes that govern them provide no structured means of revisiting them coherently as requirements, assumptions, and knowledge continue to evolve. A review of the literature reveals that, despite mature processes for feasibility assessment and requirements management, early-stage aerospace design lacks a systematic means of exploring, justifying, and revisiting design decisions as the knowledge that governs them continues to evolve. To address these, this thesis proposes a methodology centered on the concept of "system intent", the formally encoded combination of prioritized requirements, decision rationale, explicit assumptions, and tacit knowledge, and its systematic connection to multidisciplinary trade-space exploration and decision justification. The methodology is developed across three successive research areas and evaluated through a multi-domain, commercial-aircraft conceptual design demonstration that involves sequential changes to requirements and assumptions. The result is a pipeline that equips designers to formally encode the reasoning behind design decisions in a way that actively drives trade-study formulation, to respond to requirement and assumption changes through targeted updates rather than complete reconstruction, and to assess, at any point in the conceptual phase, which assumptions most threaten the stability of the current design selection and what would need to change for an alternative decision to be warranted, capabilities that current practice does not support. This work provides a structured foundation for design decision-making in complex aerospace programs where requirements, priorities, and knowledge are subject to continuous revision.

Date and time: 2026-04-23, 8AM - 11AM

Location: Collaborative Design Environment (CoVE), Weber (SST II)

Committee:
Dr. Dimitri Mavris (advisor), School of Aerospace Engineering
Prof. Daniel Schrage, School of Aerospace Engineering
Prof. Kai James (Pending), School of Aerospace Engineering
Dr. Elena Garcia, School of Aerospace Engineering
Dr. Jorge Camacho-Casero, Airbus
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