Air Vehicle Configuration Design
Air vehicle configuration design leverages the talents and requirements of many disciplines. Configuration designers need to be able to balance multiple conflicting quantitative and qualitative requirements in a way that:
- Informs critical trades while retaining options
- Differentiates appropriately between requirements and ‘desirements’ (the so-called ‘nice to have’)
- Tracks the myriad of changes that occur through even the shortest design process
- Maintains positive control and definition of the configuration selections and the criteria that lead to them
Recent advances in capability and applications for UAV configurations bring new opportunities and challenges to the configuration designer. The opportunity is to take advantage of both the direct capabilities inherent to this new technology and the indirect benefits from changes to existing requirements (for example, not providing a survivable environment for a human pilot). The challenges are to make sure the design space and criteria accurately capture the changes that come with these new, sometimes wildly different, technologies.
A key element for success is a robust process to identify critical criteria and to track their sources. A design limited by outdated criteria can be just as inefficient as one that does not leverage a new capability.
One of the traditional metrics for the capability of a configurator is the number of programs to which they have contributed. Sensible given that longer experience provides direct exposure to the design process. This includes the work involved, what worked with similar past programs, what didn’t work (actually the most important of the two), and the reasons why.
But, I think there is another metric now that new configuration possibilities are expanding to include radically different configurations. This is the breadth of different capabilities/missions/requirements your configuration team has seen. Working with many different vehicle types doesn’t just provide understanding of those specific types—the experience provides deeper insight into the meaning of the criteria and requirements that go into all of those types. That experience is invaluable when approaching any other configuration, including those that are different than ever seen before.
At TLG, our design team has experience with air and space vehicles ranging from sub-2-lb hand-launched observation platforms to the largest air vehicles in flight today, and everything in between. Plus, add space systems. Plus, add underwater and road vehicles, and even the occasional rail car. It’s what we do every day.
Our team understands not just what it does but also why it works and what the requirements are for it to be suitable for your needs. We have methods to track criteria, requirements, and configurations scalable to fit any configuration design effort.
Connect with the author:
TLG’s Director of Engineering, FAA Flight Analyst DER, and FAA Flutter DER, Robert Lind.
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