TEACHING THE NINE TECHNOLOGIES OF CONCEPTUAL AIRCRAFT DESIGN

The aircraft design curriculum at the United States Air Force Academy presents conceptual design in terms of nine fundamental technologies or activities, namely customer focus, design synthesis, engineering drawing and geometry modeling, aerodynamic analysis, constraint analysis, mission analysis, sizing, optimization, and performance and cost reporting. This paper describes these nine activities, explains how they fit together in the conceptual design process, and shows how they are taught and learned at USAFA. Examples of student work show the effectiveness of this approach. This paper also provides an overview of the aircraft design course to our own students.