Multidisciplinary Optimization Framework for Control-Configuration Integration in Aircraft Conceptual Design

The emerging flight-by-wire and flight-by-light technologies increase the possibility of enabling and improving aircraft design with excellent handling qualities and performance across the flight envelope. As a result, it is desired to take into account the dynamic characteristics and automatic control capabilities at the early conceptual stage. In this paper, an integrated control-configured aircraft design sizing framework is presented. It makes use of multidisciplinary design optimization to overcome the challenges which the flight dynamics and control integration present when included with the traditional disciplines in an aircraft sizing process. A commercial aircraft design example demonstrates the capability of the proposed methodology. The approach brings higher freedom in design, leading to aircraft that exploit the benefits of control configuration. It also helps to reduce time and cost in the engineering development cycle.