Simon I. Briceno

Application of value-driven design to commercial aeroengine systems

Value-Driven Design provides a framework to enhance the systems engineering processes for the design of large systems. By employing economics in decision making, Value-Driven Design enables rational decision making in terms of the optimum business and technical solution at every level of engineering design. This paper explains the application of ValueDriven Design to the aero-engine system through two case studies, which were conducted through workshops under the Rolls-Royce plc Advanced Cost Modeling Methodologies project. The Surplus Value Theory was utilized to provide a metric that can trade-off component designs with changes in continuous and discrete design variables. Illustrative results are presented to demonstrate how the methodology and modeling approach can be used to evaluate designs and select the value-enhancing solution.

A deep learning approach to flight delay prediction

Deep learning has achieved significant improvement in various machine learning tasks including image recognition, speech recognition, machine translation and etc. Inspired by the huge success of the paradigm, there have been lots of tries to apply deep learning algorithms to data analytics problems with big data including traffic flow prediction. However, there has been no attempt to apply the deep learning algorithms to the analysis of air traffic data. This paper investigates the effectiveness of the deep learning models in the air traffic delay prediction tasks. By combining multiple models based on the deep learning paradigm, an accurate and robust prediction model has been built which enables an elaborate analysis of the patterns in air traffic delays. In particular, Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) has shown its great accuracy in modeling sequential data. Day-to-day sequences of the departure and arrival flight delays of an individual airport have been modeled by the Long Short-Term Memory RNN architecture. It has been shown that the accuracy of RNN improves with deeper architectures. In this study, four different ways of building deep RNN architecture are also discussed. Finally, the accuracy of the proposed prediction model was measured, analyzed and compared with previous prediction methods. It shows best accuracy compared with all other methods.

A Parametric Exploration of Supersonic Business Jet Concepts Utilizing Response Surfaces

Market forecasts predict a potentially large market for a quiet supersonic business jet provided that several technical hurdles are overcome prior to fielding such a vehicle. In order to be acceptable, the QSJ must be able to fly at supersonic speeds over land and operate from regional airports while meeting government noise and emissions requirements. Physics based analysis tools are used in conjunction with a Response Surface metamodeling approach to create an environment in which the performance, economics, and environmental impact of the aircraft can be studied as a function of design and mission parameters. Through the use of this environment, the designer is able to rapidly explore the entire concept space by dynamically modifying the configuration, engine cycle, and requirements. Results obtained using this exploration tool indicate that it may be possible to meet emissions and noise requirements, but that technology infusion will be required in order to meet all performance and economic goals. Finally, this same physics-based environment was used to assess the impact of a portfolio of technologies on the system’s acceptability.

Approach to capability-based system-of-systems framework in support of naval ship design

This paper represents the latest instantiation of a series of evolving work attempting to improve the methods and techniques used for designing and supporting the acquisition of complex military systems, with an immediate application to naval surface combatants. Ship design provides an ideal proof-of-concept as traditional methods may have been restrictively anchored by designing ships within intrinsic ship systems capabilities as opposed to designing ships as an element of a SoS. The postulation is that modern naval ship design should consider the systems of interest as components subsumed by a holistic environment encompassing assets and capabilities inorganic to a naval platform. This position paper propose a starting point approach intended to provide a more defined means of establishing and improving the ship design process as part of a multi-layered maritime domain warfare enterprise. The paper will first explore the applications of SoS theories in the naval context and offer foundational definitions to better explain what is meant by capability-based framework. The proposed methodology provides a structured and cohesive approach for identifying and assessing ship capability portfolio with traceable and better known impacts on mission effectiveness, affordability and risk, in the early stages of ship design within the scope of a naval system-of-systems.

Development of a Strategic Business Decision-Making Environment for Commercial Jet Engine Selection

Presented at the 41st AIAA Aerospace Sciences, Meeting and Exhibit, Reno, NV, January 6-10, 2003.

Quiet Supersonic Jet Engine Performance Tradeoff Analysis Using a Response Surface Methodology Approach

Recent market studies indicate a renewed interest for a quiet Supersonic Business Jet (SBJ). The success of such a program will be strongly dependent upon the achievement of stringent engine noise, emissions and fuel consumption goals. This paper demonstrates the use of advanced design methods to develop a parametric design space exploration environment which will be ultimately used for the identification of an engine concept capable of satisfying acoustic levels imposed by FAR part 36 (stage IV) and NOx and CO2 standards as stated in the 1996 ICAO. The engine performance is modeled through the use of Response Surface and Design of Experiments Techniques, enabling the designer/decision-maker to change initial engine parameter values to detect the effects of the responses in a time efficient manner. Engine performance and engine weight results are obtained through physicsbased engine analysis codes developed by NASA. An SBJ airframe baseline model is used in conjunction with the engine performance data and executed through a synthesis and sizing code to simulate a supersonic mission. This paper focuses on the tradeoffs associated with noise, emissions and specific fuel consumption of the supersonic engine by employing design parameters such as overall pressure ratio, fan pressure ratio, turbine inlet temperature and throttle ratio. Finally, an optimal engine combination is created to satisfy all the constraints imposed by the aforementioned regulations for a particular mission configuration. Using a statistical analysis package, the designer has the ability to analyze tradeoffs that allows adjustments to be made to certain parameters that, although may compromise others, will still allow the system to fall within engine regulatory limits.

Strategic Analysis of Competitive Markets: A Case Study for the Narrowbody Market

Commercial aircraft developments are major endeavours which strain considerably the resources of original equipment manufacturers. Beyond these financial strains, the development programs represent huge bets for the companies due to the fixed assumptions made when business plans are conceived and the abundance of uncertainties both at the technical and market levels. Standard methods used for capital budgeting are not well suited to account for uncertainty and fail to capture the dynamic nature of markets and the erosion of leadership positions over time. The on-going research tries to overcome some of these challenges by proposing a game-theoretic based method that helps substantiate aircraft development strategies. Assessing the value of aircraft development strategies is both a complex and tedious task due to the uncertain environment and long forecasting periods. Existing methods do not always capture the problem in its entirety and usually over-simplify it by using generic customers and generic flight routes. Besides, these methods usually fail to account for lost opportnunities and for the sale diffusion process during the early lives of new aircraft. A method is proposed to carry out the valuation of strategies while accounting for some of the challenges identified. The analysis is applied to large commercial aircraft developments and investigates strategy selection in a competitive environment.

A Simulation-Based Framework for Structural Loads Assessment during Dynamic Maneuvers

Federal Aviation Regulations pertaining to structural integrity are key drivers in aircraft design and certification, and often involve critical loads occurring during dynamic maneuvers. In the context of increasing costs of testing and the general trend towards parametric design, there is a need for a more thorough consideration of such dynamic load cases earlier in the design process. In this work, a simulation framework is introduced to assess structural requirements stemming from such dynamic load conditions. Relevant aspects of the dynamics of the aircraft, the control system, and the pilot are modeled in order to simulate the maneuver and thereafter obtain inertial and aerodynamic loads on the empennage during the simulated maneuver. The loads are then translated into structural shear forces and bending moments through structural post-processing routines. This approach is demonstrated for the case of a representative business jet during the checked pitch maneuver. The analyses are repeated for three weight conditions and over the flight envelope for the aircraft from which the load cases resulting in the most constraining loads are determined.

Creation of a decision-support methodology for selecting more-electric aircraft subsystem technologies

Ambitious aircraft emission goals combined with airline fuel costs are driving an increasing focus on energy efficiency for the aircraft industry. Aircraft Equipment Systems (AES) perform key aircraft functions, such as pressurization or control surface actuation, but they are also energy consumers. Selecting the AES technologies of the future is inherently a multi-criteria problem if all stakeholders are to be satisfied. The problem is further complicated because technologies cannot be considered to be completely independent and must be considered from a subsystem architecture perspective. This paper proposes an evolution of the Strategic Prioritization and Planning (SP2) method including a two-level approach that considers both independent technologies and integrated architectures. These are then linked to technology attributes and high-level objectives through qualitative subject matter expert driven relationships. The information is finally displayed in an interactive environment that ranks technologies and architectures, while also allowing the decision maker to define and explore the scenarios driving the rankings.

A Virtual Experimentation Platform Enabling the Design, Testing, and Verification of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle through Cyber-Physical, Component-Based Design

The rate at which aerospace systems complexity has increased over the past half-century has far outpaced the advancement of design methodologies and product lifecycle management (PLM) processes used to develop those systems. The lack of investment in design methodology and PLM infrastructure has materialized in the form of inefficient and costly aerospace projects that exhibit the typical design-test-build-redesign cycle. This iterative behavior has established itself as the status quo for engineering design and is partly attributed to ill-defined and evolving program requirements, insufficient exploration of the architectural space in early stages of design, widening communication gaps between design and manufacturability, and an inability to capture certain phenomena without physical prototyping and testing. Furthermore, current aerospace systems are commonly characterized by a high parts count, increasingly complex component and subsystem interaction, and tightly coupled software-hardware dependencies. In concert, these attributes, behaviors, and practices associated with aerospace systems design continue to impair our ability to meet the demands of tomorrow without accepting a high-amount of programmatic risk in terms of project timeline and financial investment. This paper offers a new approach to the design and manufacturability of complex aerospace systems and will focus on delivering an informative account of a joint initiative between Dassault Systemes and Georgia Tech that involves the conceptual design of a microautonomous system. The micro-autonomous system is designed to support ground troops in reconnaissance missions and fulfill a critical need to provide tactical situational awareness in hostile environments. The authors will use the design of the micro-autonomous system to highlight systems engineering methods and integrated software tool suites that support the ability to facilitate requirements capture and traceability, impose manufacturability concerns early in the design process, and enhance information flow and its harmonization.