Multi-domain design assessment for aerospace components including weld accessibility

Aeroengine manufacturers need to better include assessment of risk and cost for realising the novel products needed to meet the ambitions sustainability driven targets for air transport. Radical technologies are needed that simultaneously require critical manufacturing processes to be assessed already in conceptual design. In this paper, a multi-domain framework for conceptual design and evaluation is proposed that provide the ability to interactively explore the concepts that simultaneously allow a wider range of architectures can be assessed and still include weldability of the concepts. It has been demonstrated how high level, and function driven conceptual design alternatives can be modelled and evaluated to analyse risk and resilience of architectures. Geometrical concepts generated for the most interesting regimes using design of experiments covering a desired design space. For each CAD-model the welding process can be simulated to assess feasibility and lead time for welding, and return quantified results to be included in an integrated results data set for interactive decision making. The paper is the first report from a research project that improve concurrent design of product and production concepts.