Aircraft Design Optimizing Operators, Environmental System and Manufacturers Requirements

The aircraft industry in the coming years will produce airliners of different categories for a constantly growing market. Despite this apparently advantageous position it seems increasingly difficult to design new products and new technologies which promise the same rate of economic improvements the customers enjoyed in the past. By realizing this, the analysis of the future market driven aircraft requirements becomes increasingly important.

Product strategies considering a total system approach become a more and more important factor in the aircraft design process. Competition in the global transport aircraft market forces aircraft manufacturers progressively more to take the right decisions today for investments in cost effective technologies for the products of tomorrow to stay successful, efficient and respond exactly to the variety of future customer and transportation system requirements.

The present paper describes a procedural approach to global aircraft optimization considering these requirements. A special focus is laid on a description of those elements of the decision chain, that are usually not considered as “classical” disciplines in the early stages of aircraft design: economics of operator as well as manufacturer and environmental issues.