Conceptual Design and Optimization of Environmentally-Friendly Aircraft

This paper presents an integrated design framework for the concurrent design and analysis of aircraft airframes, engines and mission profiles. The objective of this framework is to perform the conceptual design of an aircraft using multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) methodologies in order to develop optimal environmentally-friendly aircraft. The MDO problems investigated within this framework are aimed at finding optimal aircraft configurations taking into consideration the requirements and constraints of traditional design disciplines. The aircraft are optimized for a variety of objective functions, including, direct operating cost, fuel burn, LTO (landing and takeoff) NO_x emissions and fuel burn per distance flown. Single and multi-objective optimization methods are used to allow the direct comparison of aircraft optimized for the various performance metrics.