Manufacturability analysis of aircraft movables in a multi disciplinary design environment

Determining manufacturing cost and feasibility of different product design concepts is crucial the trade-off process. It is therefore important to have tools that can determine these aspects at an early stage of the design process. In this paper a framework is proposed that automates these analyses for aircraft movables. Basis of the framework is a model generator that generates the geometric and manufacturing model of a movable based on parametric inputs. This model is then used to perform cost and manufacturability analyses. The analyses are performed in different modules that are linked to the model generator. The cost analysis is performed using a bottom up method that uses data automatically generated by the model generator. Commercially available software tools are used to perform the feasibility analysis, which entails determining the chance of successfully manufacturing a part. The links between these tools and the model generator are automated to reduce the time intensive handwork of translating all the different data types. The proposed resulting framework will quickly determine the manufacturing cost and feasibility of design concepts, which allows for more concepts to be considered, maximizing the chance for a better, more cost effective, design.