Multidisciplinary aircraft design and evaluation software integrating CAD, analysis, database, and optimization

The development of an overall strategy to design the aircraft using analysis codes is presented. The procedure is automated through the integrated software MADE (multidisciplinary aircraft design and evaluation) developed in this research that enables the determination of an optimum set of aircraft configurations. The core ingredients of MADE are (i) analysis codes, which utilizes initial sizing, aerodynamics, mass, stability and control, propulsion, performance, and RCS (radar cross section) analyses, (ii) optimization utilizing gradient-based optimization technique, response surface modeling, and Carpet plot, (iii) database utilizing commercial Oracle 8i database management system (DBMS) and OCI (Oracle call interface) to save design parameters and aircraft configurations. The complexity of input and output containing massive amounts of data has previously placed severe limitations on the use of aircraft analysis codes by the general aerospace engineering community. By using C++ and the Microsoft Foundation Classes to develop a graphical user interface (GUI) and using DBMS, it is believed that use of MADE can avoid the additional cumbersome, and sometimes tedious, task of preparing the required input files manually and can make the transition to general usability in an aerospace engineering environment. For detail explanation, examples of E–R diagram, class diagram, and data flows between codes for the MADE are also presented.