Rotor Blade Manufacturing Process Tradeoffs Using a Cost/Time Analysis

An integrated design and manufacturing approach allows economic decisions to be made that reflect an entire system design as a whole. Production cost estimates are typically applied for evaluation of process trades at the system level. To add more clarity to the design and manufacturing trades, the prediction of the effort needed to produce the product is needed. To achieve this objective, this paper suggests the use of cost/time analysis (CTA) in conjunction with a detailed life cycle cost simulation model. Utilizing input data already used to predict production cost estimates, CTA can be regarded as a communication tool during early design phases. It allows additional manufacturing knowledge to facilitate informed decision making. The use of cost/time analysis for aircraft production is demonstrated for the evaluation of production alternatives. Numerical results are presented for a CTA of main rotor blade concepts for hypothetical rotorcraft.