21st Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, 13-18 September, 1998
Paper ICAS-98-6.4.2

MULTIDISCIPLINARY DESIGN AND OPTIMISATION OF A LARGE SCALE CIVIL AIRCRAFT WING

Morris A. J., Gantois K.
Cranfield University, United Kingdom

Keywords: multidisciplinary, design, optimisation, large scale, civil aircraft wing

The paper describes the results obtained during a major European Union funded project which attempted to create a distributed Multi-disciplinary Design and Optimisation (MOO) system. The project involved a cooperation between most of the European airframe manufacturers spread across the European Union. The MOO system incorporated weight, drag and manufacturing costs as direct or quasi-direct variables and included other factors such as flutter speed considerations and stability as constraints. The system was applied to the design of a large scale civil airliner wing of similar proportions to the A3XX. The results of the project clearly show that .the approach represents an effective design methodology which can be applied to realistic large-scale design problems. It has led to the creation of a number of tools which allow the methodology to be employed in a distributed design environment.

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