3374. MassMorph

Paper

Abstract

MassMorph is a technical innovation that has revolutionized Cessna’s Advanced Design Weights processes. It is a flexible and robust process which speeds design by morphing highly detailed legacy mass properties and finite element models into new product designs. It provides an immediate head start in design and analysis, enabling timely review of alternate design approaches, and closes automation gaps for multi-disciplinary analysis and optimization. It can readily blend morphed mass properties from legacy aircraft databases and new analysis of engineering CAD models to support any phase of product development. The process produces a detailed report of target weights and CGs by functional group, mass properties for Loads, Dynamics, and Aeroelastic Stability functions, and conforms mass properties to detailed finite element models for structural analysis. The process provides extensive query capabilities by functional group, part, next higher assembly, inertial bay, volume, and/or FEM grid using regular expressions, which makes it a good research tool for legacy aircraft databases. The process is being expanded to facilitate morphing financial cost models. The process leverages Cessna’s hierarchal functional group (formally Army-Navy codes) methods. The morphing process relies on mass particulation to transform both mass data to the target aircraft, and performs transformations in homogeneous coordinates (four-dimensions) to accommodate linear transformations for taper in addition to translation, rotation, shear, and scaling.