Enabling Technologies for Unified Life-Cycle Engineering of Structural Components
Abstract
This report addresses the application of unified life-cycle engineering approaches, to the design, manufacture and application of structural components, especially structural components for advanced military weapons systems. Unified life-cycle engineering (ULCE), or concurrent engineering, is a design engineering environment in which computer-aided design technology is used to assess and improve the quality of a product not only during the active design phases but throughout its entire life cycle by integrating and optimizing design attributes for producibility and supportability as well as for performance, operability, cost, and schedule. The study identifies and evaluates priorities for research and development in life-cycle engineering with the goal of identifying the enabling technologies that underpin ULCE, their readiness for application, and the research and development required to make them commercially available in a 10-year period. The committee examined the current and desired future environments for five factors in a product's life cycle: design, manufacture, product support, materials, and information systems. Four critical issues are identified and conclusions and recommendations to support the development of an effective ULCE design engineering environment are defined.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 22, 1991
- Accession Number
- ADA248638