Environmental & flight control system architecture optimization from a family concept design perspective

One method an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) can apply to reduce development and manufacturing costs is family concept design: each product family member is designed for a different design point, but a significant amount of components is shared among the family members. In this case, a trade-off exists between member performance and commonality. In the design of complex systems, often many different architectures are possible, and the design space is too large to explore exhaustively. In this work, we present an application of a new architecture optimization method to the design of a family of passenger transport jets, with a focus on the sizing of the Environmental Control System (ECS) and Flight Control System (FCS). The architecture design space is modeled using the Architecture Design Space Graph (ADSG), a novel method for constructing model-based system architecture optimization problems. Decisions are extracted and the multi-objective optimization problem is automatically formulated. Objectives used are commonality, representing acquisition costs, and fuel burn, representing a part of operation costs. These metrics are evaluated using a cross-organizational collaborative multidisciplinary analysis toolchain, and the resulting Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) problem is solved using a multi-objective evolutionary optimization algorithm. The results show that the trade-off between commonality and fuel burn is only present above a certain commonality level.