Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 February 2016
Aircraft manufacturers often consider producing multiple derivatives of aircraft to satisfy various market demands and technical changes while keeping development costs and time to a minimum. Many approaches have been proposed for carrying out derivative design. However, these approaches consider both the baseline design and derivatives together at the conceptual design stage using the entire set of design variables with an assumed set of expected requirements. These frozen requirements on derivative design cannot consider new demands from market changes. In this paper, a method is proposed that uses design optimisation for conceptual design of derivatives for existing aircraft that consider requirement changes. Furthermore, the Possibility-Based Design Optimisation (PBDO) method was implemented to consider uncertainty in the aircraft operation phase. The altitude range of aircraft operation was defined as an uncertain parameter to prevent violation of constraints in the entire operating envelope of the aircraft. The PBDO method yields a more conservative design than those obtained with deterministic design optimisation.
In this paper, the proposed derivative design process was applied to the Expedition 350, a small piston engine powered aircraft produced by Found Aircraft, Canada. A derivative that changes the normally aspirated engine to a turbocharged engine for high-altitude operation was considered. An optimum configuration with the new engine was obtained while enhancing performance and stability characteristics. The proposed derivative design process can be implemented on the derivative design of other aircraft.