Advanced Aircraft Analysis: A Powerful, User Friendly Framework for Airplane Preliminary Design and Analysis

The Advanced Aircraft Analysis software package (AAA) is a UNIX workstation based program for the preliminary design and analysis of airplanes. The program began as a research project at the University of Kansas Center for Research with the intent of creating a user-friendly framework for the unique, iterative process of airplane preliminary design. Marketing of AAA began in 1991 and it is now in use throughout the world by industry and academia. Further development of AAA is driven by user feedback and new methods as they become available.

AAA combines various methods of design and analysis of airplanes into one application completely controlled by a computer mouse. No prior knowledge of computers or operating systems is required to use AAA. The program leads the user through a path of choices to a point where data can be entered and processed. The structure of the program allows the user to make any calculation at any time given the proper input data. This paper discusses the methods and design process upon which AAA is based. In addition, example input and output data and graphs are presented.