Optimization of Future Aircraft Concepts and Their Operational Environment

由于航空业约占人为二氧化碳排放量的2.5%，行业努力的目标是实现碳中和。对于设计师来说，这意味着他们必须将完全不同的技术融入到未来的飞机概念中。由于行业内每个部门的固有偏见，设计师需要优化飞机的配置，以便就航空业未来的发展达成一致。尽管如此，现成的优化例程不适合此目的。这有两个原因。一方面，飞机设计空间是高度复杂的，包括离散变量和连续变量。另一方面，在飞机设计中有几个关键目标，这意味着在设计空间中导航需要一种好的方法来对设计进行排名。当前的多目标（MO）设计工具依赖于使用帕累托等价或基于权重的目标函数。前者导致设计者不能很好地理解多维权衡，而后者可以不显眼地操纵以获得期望的结果。本项目旨在通过使用多学科方法来解决上述问题。首先，将研究和模拟新技术和操作环境。这些技术包括由替代能源（包括氢）提供动力的清洁推进系统。该项目的这一方面属于氢和替代能源矢量EPSRC研究领域的福尔斯。其次，将开发一种可以优化飞机配置及其操作环境的工具。该项目的主要目标之一是推广该工具，使其能够优化其他系统的系统。该项目的这一方面福尔斯工程设计EPSRC研究领域。该项目是我的工程硕士项目的延续，该项目本身与剑桥大学前博士生所做的工作有关。在这些过去的项目中，它被提出并表明，一个有前途的算法来建立所需的系统的系统是禁忌搜索（TS）结合多个优势关系（MDR）。该项目将进一步测试MDR的能力，MDR是一种新的多目标排序方法，通过将设计空间从飞机扩展到飞机及其操作环境。

With aviation being responsible for about 2.5% of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, industry efforts have been aimed toward achieving carbon neutrality. For designers, this means that they are having to incorporate radically different technologies into their future aircraft concepts. As a result of the baked-in biases of each sector within the industry, designers are needing to optimize the configuration of aircraft to come to an agreement on what the aviation sector will have to look like in the future. Despite this, off-the-shelf optimization routines are not suitable for this purpose. This is for two reasons. On the one hand, the aircraft design space is highly complex, consisting of both discrete and continuous variables. On the other hand, there are several critical objectives in the design of aircraft, meaning that navigating the design space requires a good way to rank designs. Current Multi-Objective (MO) design tools rely on either using Pareto equivalence or a weight-based objective function. The former results in a multi-dimensional trade-off that cannot be well-understood by the designer, whereas the latter method can be manipulated inconspicuously to obtain a desired outcome.This project aims to tackle the aforementioned problems by using a multidisciplinary approach. First, new technologies and operating environments will be studied and modelled. Such technologies include clean propulsion systems powered by alternative energy sources, including hydrogen. This aspect of the project falls under the Hydrogen and Alternative Energy Vectors EPSRC research area. Secondly, a tool that can optimise the aircraft configuration and its operating environment will be developed. One of the major goals of this project is to generalise this tool to allow it to optimise other systems of systems. This aspect of the project falls under the Engineering Design EPSRC research area.This project is a continuation of my MEng project, which itself was related to the work undertaken by former PhD students from the University of Cambridge. In these past projects, it is proposed and shown that a promising algorithm to build the required system of systems is Tabu Search (TS) combined with Multiple Dominance Relations (MDR). This project will further test the capabilities of MDR, a new ranking method for multiple objectives, by extending the design space from just the aircraft to the aircraft and its operating environment.