A Methodology for the Parametric Exploration of the Impact of Production Planning on the Early Stages of Design

The increasing use of advanced composite materials in recent aircraft programs calls for new ways to conduct design. This paper presents a methodology that brings manufacturing and production considerations in the early stages of aircraft design as a means to help alleviate some of the new design challenges that the aircraft manufacturing industry is facing. In particular, this paper discusses how the proposed methodology integrates surrogate modeling techniques with visual analytics capabilities to provide the designer with a better understanding of the interface and trades that exist between performance, manufacturing, and production at the later stages of Conceptual design. A composite redesigned F-86 Sabre wing-box is used as a proof-of-concept for this research.