Design rationale analysis methods for aeronautical engineering

21世纪飞机工程师面临的根本挑战是如何控制设计问题的复杂性和规模。这有多个方面。设计问题的解决方案（例如，下一代运输机的机翼是什么样子）受到法规、性能要求以及环境、可持续性和可维护性考虑的限制。由于对冗余和功能的高要求，最终的产品本身也很复杂。不可避免地，设计过程反映了这种复杂性，并随着规模的增加而失去效率。该博士学位将帮助我们从以创新的方式捕捉设计决策背后的基本原理的角度来解决这个问题-它们的有效后续检索将有助于产品认证和重新设计，以一种有利于产品复杂性的方式进行扩展。

The fundamental challenge for the 21st century aircraft engineer is to stay on top of the complexity and size of the design problem. This has multiple facets. The solution to a design question (such as, what does the wing of a next generation transport aircraft look like) is constrained by regulations, performance requirements and environmental, sustainability and maintainability considerations. The resulting product itself is complex too, as driven by high demands on redundancy and functionality. Inevitably, design processes mirror this complexity and lose efficiency with increasing scale. This PhD will help us tackle this problem from the point of view of capturing the rationale behind design decisions in innovative ways - their efficient subsequent retrieval will aid product certification and re-design in a way that scales favourably with product complexity.