Integration of Configuration Design and Analysis of Aircraft

The integration and application of multidisciplinary computer-aided engineering (CAE) software to expedite the configuration and structural designs of aircraft are being attempted. Various interfaces and computer programs have been developed to transfer data between computer aided design (CAD) software, finite element analysis (FEA) codes, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) meshes and control system analysis programs to facilitate multidisciplinary analysis of a vehicle design. The structural, thermal, aerodynamic and control characteristics, and their interactions can be predicted. The computer codes, interfaces and data translators developed, and the modeling and simulation procedures are described herein. The modeling and multidisciplinary analysis of a generic hypersonic vehicle configuration is presented as a test case.