DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF THE PRESTO AIR VEHICLE PREDESIGN SYNTHESIS METHODOLOGY

One of the major challenges today is the development of preliminary design capability that provides rapid response time and technical flexibility and is easily adaptable to changing customer requirements. In 1991 Bell initiated the development of the Preliminary Rotorcraft Evaluation and Sizing Tool (PRESTO) to meet this challenge. As a result of the efforts of a multidisciplined development team, PRESTO is evolving into a robust system founded on past lessons learned. Since its first application in 1992, PRESTO has been utilized in seven contracted and in-house predesign studies involving helicopters and tiltrotors. It has proven to be well suited for integration into the overall engineering design process. This paper will present the general PRESTO development approach as well as its system structure and technical capability. The paper will conclude with a case study to demonstrate PRESTO’s application to a commercial tiltrotor design problem.