High Fidelity MDO Process Development and Application to Fighter Strike Conceptual Design

As design requirements and affordability for future aircraft become increasingly demanding, aircraft design processes will be required to explore a larger design space and capture multi-disciplinary effects during conceptual design to effectively assess the benefits of new technologies. Lockheed Martin is currently participating in the ESAVE (Efficient Supersonic Air Vehicle Exploration) AFRL program which is developing MDO-based improvements to the fighter strike conceptual design process. This paper discusses the program progress to date of both conceptual design process improvements for fighter/strike aircraft and the application of the resultant MDO process to a specific design problem. The fighter/strike design process involves many coupled discipline interactions due to demanding mission performance requirements. The ESAVE program has focused on capturing the discipline interactions required for the active structures and variable cycle engine technologies. Initial results demonstrate that integration of these structural and propulsion technologies in an MDO-based framework expands the traditional fighter/strike design space and can potentially provide significant performance improvements compared to conventional conceptual design processes.