Environment of Design Requirements Input and Preliminary Sizing for Aircraft Conceptual Design

To supply a convenient and expandable tool to organize the design requirements of a new aircraft and estimate its basic design parameters during conceptual design, the Environment of Design Requirements Input and Preliminary Sizing (EDRIPS) was developed. In this environment, the performance requirements, mission profile and payloads could be inputted or selected respectively through user-friendly interfaces in a highly interactive way. Based on these requirements, it enables the designer to pick up a design point in the solution space through constraint analysis, and then conduct mission analysis either step by step or via auto iteration by using an improved method for estimating the takeoff weight. The implementation of each module and the methods utilized are described. A design example is finally presented and analyzed to validate the efficiency and reliability of applying EDRIPS to aircraft conceptual design.