21st Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, 13-18 September, 1998
Paper ICAS-98-6.4.4

FLYING OBJECTS - AN OBJECT-ORIENTED TOOLBOX FOR MULTIDISCIPLINARY DESIGN AND EVALUATION OF AIRCRAFT

Schneegans A., Kranz O.
PACE GmbH, Berlin, Germany

Keywords: flying objects, object-oriented, toolbox, multidisciplinary design, evaluation, aircraft

The following paper presents an innovative development project of a software program family for aircraft modelling, design and evaluation. The overall goal is to provide for a consistent data model of the aircraft geometry and the associated attributes. The data model shall supply the information to a toolbox of evaluation and design sub-processes. This program architecture shall form the basis for a family of program applications which share one single data model. Software design drivers which determine the underlying architecture include the demand to smoothly integrate arbitrary data structures into a ,single project hierarchy, the automatic communication of relevant changes in the data structure and the providence of uniform visualisation techniques, nevertheless keeping up the access performance. The introduction of an object and attribute oriented data management, a commercial 3D geometric modeller and powerful interfaces for the graphical presentation give the basis for the program system. First derivatives of the program family include a mission performance calculation application with flexible input filters for legacy data, a cabin configuration tool for automated generation of 20 cabin drawings and 3D visualisation of the cabin interior as well as the first version of a comprehensive design and evaluation tool which shall replace existing, conventional systems.

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