Rapid Parametric Design of Advanced Composite Structures on the Survivable Affordable Repairable Airframe Program

Sikorsky Aircraft has developed a rapid parametric modeling process for designing complex composite structures under a Sikorsky Aircraft /US Army – Applied Aviation Technology Directorate cooperative agreement called Survivable Affordable Repairable Airframe Program – Virtual Prototype and Validation. One major challenge of the program is to reduce non-recurring aircraft design costs by 40% over current baseline processes. One opportunity to achieve this goal was through the introduction of a more efficient integrated design and analysis process, primarily through the use of Dassault’s CATIA V5 as the base software platform. This paper describes how the advanced parametric capabilities of CATIA V5 and CPD (Dassault’s composite part definition tool) were used to successfully reduce design time and improve modeling accuracy during the detail design of a composite roof demonstration structure.