The progressive transition from conventional to More Electric aircraft subsystem architectures occurring in the aerospace industry necessitates earlier consideration of subsystem impacts in the design process. Significant challenges arise in this regard due to the unavailability of historical information regarding unconventional subsystem architectures as well as the limited definition of the aircraft that exists during the early design phases. This paper assesses the impact of sources of uncertainty on subsystem architectures using the Integrated Subsystem Sizing and Architecture Assessment Capability, which links subsystem and aircraft sizing and analyses. Uncertainty may arise due to limitations, assumptions, or simplifications in the undertaken modeling approach or due to variations in the assumed or projected technological state-of-the-art. In this work, some of these major sources of uncertainty are identified and propagated into the performance analysis of a selected number of subsystem architectures. Both the gross effect of all identified sources of uncertainty and the relative impacts of individual ones are evaluated. More substantially electrified subsystem architectures are seen to retain a performance advantage even in the presence of epistemic uncertainty and show more significant improvement with improving technological state-of-the-art, most notably that of power electronics, electrical generators, and electric motors.
Assessing Impact of Epistemic and Technological Uncertainty on Aircraft Subsystem Architectures
Journal of Aircraft ; 54 , 4 ; 1388-1406
2017-07-01
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Assessing Impact of Epistemic and Technological Uncertainty on Aircraft Subsystem Architectures
Online Contents | 2016
|Assessing Impact of Epistemic and Technological Uncertainty on Aircraft Subsystem Architectures
Online Contents | 2017
|British Library Conference Proceedings | 2016
|