System Architecture Studies for the Energy Optimized Aircraft

摘要

Future aerospace platforms are broadly falling into a new technology initiative referred to as Energy Optimized Aircraft (EOA) due to the need for energy efficient aircraft with enhanced capabilities. EOA platforms are some of the most technically and programmatically complex programs currently being endeavored within the aerospace industry. Selecting and evaluating different system and subsystem architectures within EOA platforms is critical, but can be time-consuming without the systematic ability to target key architectures for evaluation. Boeing and Rolls-Royce derived an architecture down-select (ADS) strategy. The ADS was developed to derive and evaluate several conceptual-level architectures during the initial phase of a future EOA platform development program. The capability-based ADS combined a top-down functional architecture selection with a bottoms-up physical architecture selection. The functional and physical architectures followed a four and ten-step process, respectively. The ADS leveraged EOA capability goals as the basis for deriving functions and functional architectures, deriving and down-selecting multiple competing subsystem architectures from thousands of competing technologies, and deriving and evaluating multiple competing system architectures.