3637. Integrated Product Design and Weight Engineering
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Paper
Abstract
This paper is based on Altair Engineering’s research & global experience in improving the product design process by the application of optimization and business analytics. The research focuses on improving the design of aircrafts and other low volume manufactured products by incorporating leading edge solutions towards influencing the earliest stages of design. This specific paper builds upon frameworks that have been built by other researchers, and implements them in a real world scenario.
Today’s aircrafts are among the largest and most complex products made with long lifecycles. Building these requires tight collaboration between the manufacturer, supplier and airline fleet owners. Furthermore, they may be developed for a specific business for which components and requirements may change continuously.
The aircraft design process suited to the above has been described by various frameworks – INCOSE 2006, Spiral Design, Simultaneous Requirements and Design Development. Our research indicates that regardless of the process chosen, the key criteria for a successful project are:
– The ability to have optimized architectural and structural decisions upfront in the design cycle when the design is immature
– The ability to manage rapid design change due to evolving requirements
– The ability to rapidly highlight the effect of those design changes leading to timely corrective actions as needed, using business analytic principles
This paper shall show how engineers can derive optimum structures that meet design requirements with the minimum possible material mass. This results in a product that is less expensive to manufacture and maintain.
This paper shall also highlight how engineers can rapidly highlight the effect of these designs and their changes on product attributes such as weight and balance. Providing such process and tools for data consolidation, tracking and reporting, enables constituents of the extended enterprise to contribute more to product development by focusing on identifying, managing and improving mass properties and associated opportunities, risks and uncertainties.
