Technology Identification, Evaluation, and Selection for Commercial Transport Aircraft

Company and Government clearance, as appropriate, is solely the responsibility of the author. Opinions expressed in technical papers or in discussions at meetings are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Society. ABSTRACT This paper outlines a comprehensive, structured, and robust methodology for decision making in the early phases of aircraft design. The proposed approach is referred to as the Technology Identification, Evaluation, and Selection (TIES) method. The nine-step process provides the decision maker/designer with an ability to easily assess and trade-off the impact of various technologies in the absence of sophisticated, time-consuming mathematical formulations for project resource allocation. The method also provides a framework where technically feasible and economically viable alternatives can be identified with accuracy and speed while the impact on the economics is quantified. Furthermore, structured and systematic techniques are utilized to identify possible concepts and evaluation criteria by which comparisons could be made. Through the implementation of each step, the best family of alternatives for a customer-focused overall measure of value can be identified and assessed subjectively or objectively. This method was applied to a 150 passenger, intra-continental commercial transport as a proof of concept investigation. MOTIVATION The design of complex systems, such as commercial aircraft, has shifted its focus from the traditional design for performance to design for affordability. This paradigm shift calls for solutions outside of the traditional, historical evolutionary databases and demands the consideration of all life cycle associated implications [1]. The shift implies a new means of evaluating the " goodness " of an aircraft system must be established in lieu of the standard system level metrics, such as minimum gross weight or maximum performance. In the most general sense, this can be established with a customer focused " Overall Measure of Value " for the system under consideration. The Overall Measure of Value (OMV) is established based on defined customer needs or wants of a system. The customer need not be a cohesive entity, such as an airline, but can be more abstract, such as a response to a societal need or military threat. In that case, the system of interest for which the OMV is defined is the vehicle. Else, if the customer is the designer, the system can be a sub-component of the vehicle. One method of decomposing the OMV into contributing elements is shown in Figure 1. For some societal need, the OMV …