21st Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, 13-18 September, 1998
Paper ICAS-98-6.1.3

A STOCHASTIC DESIGN APPROACH FOR AIRCRAFT AFFORDABILITY

Mavris D. N., Delaurentis D. A.
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Keywords: stochastic design, aircraft affordability

A novel approach to assessing aircraft system feasibility and viability over time is presented, with special emphasis on modeling and estimating the impact of new technologies. The approach is an integral part of an overall stochastic, life-cycle design process under development by the authors, which is to address the new measure for system value, affordability. Stochastic methods are proposed since the design process is immersed in ambiguity and uncertainty, both of which vary with time as knowledge increases about the system behavior. The specific task of examining system feasibility and viability is encapsulated and explained in five steps in this paper. The probabilistic approach contained in these steps is compared to more traditional, deterministic means for examining a design space and evaluating technology impacts. Finally, the techniques are implemented on an example problem to highlight the additional realism and information that is obtained. The example is based on a High Speed Civil Transport vehicle design, and is meant to illustrate the power of the technique on a current problem of significant interest to the international aerospace community.

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