Bi-level Integrated System Synthesis: A Proposed Application to Aeroelastic Constraint Analysis in a Conceptual Design Environment

The projection of aeroelastic constraints in the design space has long been a want in the design process of vehicles. These properties are usually not established accurately until later phases of design. The desire is to bring another interactive constraint to the conceptual design phase and allow the designer to see the impact of design decisions on aeroelastic characteristics.

Even though a number of analysis and optimization tools have been developed to support aeroelastic analysis and optimization in the flight vehicle design process, the toolbox is far from being complete. The results often cannot be obtained in a manner timely enough and the natural division of the engineering team into specialty groups is not supported very well by the aerodynamic-structures monolithic codes typically in the above toolbox. The monolithic codes are also not amenable to the use of concurrent processing now made available by computer technology.

The paper examines how a decomposition method known as BLISS (Bi-level Integrated System Synthesis) could be adapted to perform as an aeroelastic design tool. The method separates the disciplines, enables them to do their own analyses and optimizations, and represents their results in approximate models used by the system optimization that preserves the coupling. Preceded by an overview of the BLISS methodology, this research describes a comprehensive solution of the aeroelastic coupled problem cast in a decomposition format, and identifies potential difficulties and options for overcoming these difficulties. The examination leads to a blueprint for development, supported by some preliminary implementation details.