The paper is primarily concerned with the modelling of aircraft manufacturing cost. The aim is to establish an integrated life cycle balanced design process through a systems engineering approach to interdisciplinary analysis and control. The cost modelling is achieved using the genetic causal approach that enforces product family categorisation and the subsequent generation of causal relationships between deterministic cost components and their design source. This utilises causal parametric cost drivers and the definition of the physical architecture from the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) to identify product families. The paper presents applications to the overall aircraft design with a particular focus on the fuselage as a subsystem of the aircraft, including fuselage panels and localised detail, as well as engine nacelles. The higher level application to aircraft requirements and functional analysis is investigated and verified relative to life cycle design issues for the relationship between acquisition cost and Direct Operational Cost (DOC), for a range of both metal and composite subsystems. Maintenance is considered in some detail as an important contributor to DOC and life cycle cost. The lower level application to aircraft physical architecture is investigated and verified for the WBS of an engine nacelle, including a sequential build stage investigation of the materials, fabrication and assembly costs. The studies are then extended by investigating the acquisition cost of aircraft fuselages, including the recurring unit cost and the non-recurring design cost of the airframe sub-system. The systems costing methodology is facilitated by the genetic causal cost modeling technique as the latter is highly generic, interdisciplinary, flexible, multilevel and recursive in nature, and can be applied at the various analysis levels required of systems engineering. Therefore, the main contribution of paper is a methodology for applying systems engineering costing, supported by the genetic causal cost modeling approach, whether at a requirements, functional or physical level.

In this paper, a simple static compressible flow model for circular synthetic jet actuators is described. It is used to undertake a systematic computational investigation of the effect of changing actuator geometrical and operating parameters on the magnitude of peak jet velocity at the orifice exit of an actuator whose diaphragm displacement and frequency are allowed to vary independently. It is found that, depending on the flow conditions inside the orifice duct, the actuator may operate in two distinct regimes, i.e. the Helmholtz resonance regime and the viscous flow regime. In the Helmholtz resonance regime, the resultant synthetic jet is generated by the mass physically displaced by the oscillating diaphragm coupled with the Helmholtz resonance in the actuator. In the viscous flow regime, the Helmholtz resonance is completely damped by viscous effect such that the jet is produced by the diaphragm oscillation alone. The relationship between actuator geometrical and operating parameters at the optimum condition which yields the maximum peak jet velocity at a given diaphragm displacement is also established for these two regimes. Finally, a preliminary procedure for designing synthetic jet actuators for flow separation control on an aircraft wing is proposed.

In commercially available gas turbine performance simulation tools, individual engine components are typically represented with non-dimensional maps of experimental or default data. In those cases where actual component characteristics are not available and default characteristics are used instead, conventional tools can deviate substantially at off-design and transient conditions. Similarly, when real component characteristics are available, conventional engine cycle simulation tools can not predict the performance of the engine at other than nominal conditions satisfactorily, or account for the impact of changes in component geometry.

This study looked into the full integration of two-dimensional streamline curvature component models with a low fidelity cycle program. Firstly, the obtained engine performance was compared against the one calculated based on default component characteristics. As a second case study, a range of flight Mach numbers and angles of attack were examined together with the effect of three different intake lip geometries on the performance of a notional, two-spool, low-bypass ratio, military engine. Two-dimensional models were used in the engine cycle analysis to provide a more accurate, physics- and geometry-based estimate of intake and fan performances.

The analysis carried out by this study demonstrated relative changes in the predicted engine performance larger than 1%. For briefness, representative results are presented and discussed in this paper for one flight Mach number and angle of attack setting. More importantly, this research effort established the necessary methodology and technology required towards a full, two-dimensional engine cycle analysis at an affordable computational resource in the very short term.

This paper introduces a characterisation of the performance indices and operating limits of the self field magnetoplasmadynamic thruster. The thrust, specific impulse, and efficiency are considered as the main performance indices, while the operating limits are the cathode lifetime, onset phenomenon, and the overfed state of the thruster. The effects of thruster parameters (current, mass flow rate, geometry, and propellant type) on the performance indices and operating limits are examined using one-dimensional model of cylindrical self-field thrusters. Design charts are presented to help the designers to choose the optimum and safe set of the thruster parameters that realise certain mission requirements.

Component maps are produced under certain environmental conditions using air as the working fluid during static ground operation. Any changes of the component characteristics when operating under different temperature conditions and/or with different working fluid are partially taken into account, because of the existence of the gas constant and the ratio of the specific heats in the non-dimensional mass flow and rotational speed. This provides a second order correction for the component characteristics, which may be adequate for the initial modeling of engines. However, for rigorous performance calculations correction factors are applied to the non-dimensional mass flow, rotational speed and pressure ratio distributions of a map, when deviations from the reference conditions under which it was extracted, are experienced. In the current study, a different approach is considered in order to eliminate the inaccuracies caused by the varying temperature and chemical composition. It makes direct use of inlet and circumferential Mach numbers based upon stagnation temperature in conjunction with dimensionless enthalpy variation. A sensitivity analysis against gas property variations is conducted to quantify the benefits gained in precision. Generally, the well-known relationships correlating the Mach number with total and static properties are based on the assumption of perfect gas and constant gas properties. Introducing dependency on temperature and/or chemical composition for the caloric properties of the semi-perfect gas, proper mean values are defined and some theoretical corrections are provided for the well-known equations. The mass flow compatibility equation is then based on the ‘corrected’ expression correlating dimensionless mass flow and Mach number and takes full account of gas property variations.

When designing flight control laws using linearisations of an aircraft model about different flight conditions, some form of scheduling of the resultant gains will often be required to implement the controller over wide operating regions. In practice, the controller gains are often scheduled against relatively slowly-varying system states such as altitude or velocity. However, it may also be desirable to schedule gains against rapidly-varying states such as angle-of-attack, thereby generating a cyclic dependence through hidden coupling terms. Previous published work at Bristol has developed a numerical method of accounting for this dependence when scheduling state feedback gains against coupled states. The resulting ‘dynamic gain schedule’ is shown to significantly improve the transient response of the aircraft model during rapid manoeuvring and to reduce the chances of control surface actuator position limit saturation. In this paper, the novel design process, using eigenstructure assignment, is applied to a mathematical second-order longitudinal aircraft model which represents an approximate BAe Hawk wind-tunnel model. The dynamic gain scheduled controller is shown to work extremely well in practice when applied to the closed-loop experimental rig. Despite the highly nonlinear characteristics of the model aerodynamics and tailplane actuation system, as well as unmodelled high turbulence levels, dynamic gain scheduling demonstrates stable closed loop control even in regions where the nonlinearities are such that conventional gain scheduling fails to produce a stable response.