An Optimization-Based Approach to Determine System Requirements Under Multiple-Domain Specific Uncertainties

Abstract

The task of determining the optimal design requirements of a new system, which will operate along with other existing systems to provide a set of overarching capabilities, is challenging due to the tightly coupled effects that setting requirements on a systems design can have on how the operator uses the system. In this paper, the new system is a strategic military cargo aircraft and the other systems are a fleet of different, existing cargo aircraft; a subset of actual fleet operations from the U.S. Air Force Air Mobility Command defines the example problems in this work. This research builds upon prior efforts to develop a quantitative approach that identifies optimum design requirements of new, yet-to-be-designed systems that, when serving along side other systems, will optimize fleet-level objectives. The new efforts here address the effect of various uncertainties. The approach incorporates techniques from multidisciplinary design optimization, statistical theory, and robust/reliability-based methods to develop computationally tractable approaches for this kind of problem. The paper also demonstrates the ability to generate tradeoffs between a cost-related metric of fleet-level fuel usage and a performance related metric of fleet-wide productivity. A possible extension for application in commercial air travel also appears in the paper.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 30, 2016
Accession Number
AD1016768

Entities

People

  • Navindran Davendralingam
  • Parithi Govindaraju
  • William Crossley

Organizations

  • Purdue University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aeronautics
  • Air Force
  • Air Transportation
  • Aircraft Design
  • Aircrafts
  • Cargo Aircraft
  • Case Studies
  • Commercial Aviation
  • Integer Programming
  • Mathematical Programming
  • Monte Carlo Method
  • Operations Research
  • Optimization
  • Passenger Aircraft
  • Payload
  • Systems Engineering
  • Transport Aircraft

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Aerospace logistics and air mobility.
  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development
  • Life Cycle Cost Analysis