21st Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, 13-18 September, 1998
Paper ICAS-98-6.8.2

FROM A MONO-DISCIPLINARY TO A MULTI-DISCIPLINARY APPROACH IN AEROSPACE: AS SEEN FROM AN INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY PERSPECTIVE

Vogels M. E. S., Arendsen P., Krol R. J., Laban M., Pruis G. W.
National Aerospace Laboratory NLR, The Netherlands

Keywords: mono-disciplinary, multi-disciplinary, aerospace, information, communication technology

In Europe, the MOO Consortium has validated the viability of Multi-Disciplinary Optimisation (MOO) for simplified but realistic aircraft preliminary design tasks concerning the design of a large civil a/c where a non-trivial interaction is expected between the mono-disciplines of aerodynamics and structures. NLR, one of the Consortium members, has carried out the work in a multi-disciplinary team with specialists from aerodynamics, structures, and information and communication technology (ICT). Whereas the team takes responsibility for the harmonisation and coherence of the multi-discipline research, each discipline is responsible for the own discipline's contribution. Fu particular, the ICT discipline is responsible for the coherence of the activities on ICT level. The most relevant requirements on ICT in a transition from a mono-discipline approach to a multi-discipline approach, as we experienced them, are presented, along with our solutions, and the results for a wing shape optimisation study with simultaneous influence from the aerodynamic and the structures area.

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