22nd Congress of International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, Harrogate, UK, 28 August - 1st September, 2000
Paper ICAS 2000-1.4.4

METHODOLOGY FOR EXAMINING THE SIMULTANEOUS IMPACT OF REQUIREMENTS, VEHICLE CHARACTERISTICS, AND TECHNOLOGIES ON MILITARY AIRCRAFT DESIGN

D. N. Mavris, D. DeLaurentis
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA

Keywords: military aircraft design

The process of systems engineering has always emphasized the definition of requirements as the first step toward product development. Typically, however, these requirements were examined in isolation from the potential systems and technologies they would likely impact. Further, requirements were treated deterministically during design, which sometimes led actual systems that were nonrobust when different requirements were encountered. Thus, there is a need to examine requirements early on and in a new way. This “new way” must include an environment for the simultaneous examination of requirements, design variables, and technologies. Further, this environment must be built in a probabilistic fashion since the requirements may be ambiguous and/or uncertain, the eventual cost and performance of critical technologies are highly uncertain, and the possibility of system “growth” must be accounted. The ultimate goal of the probabilistic approach is finding solutions robust to these uncertainties. A methodology for the creation of just such an environment is described in this paper.

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