Structured Expert Judgment Elicitation in Conceptual Aircraft Design

Disruptive technologies and novel aircraft generations represent a potential approach to address the ambitious emission reduction goals in aviation. However, the introduction of innovative concepts is a time-consuming process, which might not necessarily yield an optimal design for a given flight mission and within the defined time frame. In order to address the need for a structured and more exhaustive search for novel concept generations, the Advanced Morphological Approach (AMA) and its further enhancement was introduced earlier. It implies the decomposition of design problems into functional attributes and appropriate technological alternatives. Subsequently, these are evaluated and combined into solutions, which are then projected onto a solution space. The current paper focuses on the technology evaluation step by deriving and integrating structured expert judgment elicitation (SEJE) techniques into conceptual aircraft design with the AMA. For this purpose, the first aim of the work is to justify the developed method by giving an overview and discussing the most prominent SEJE methods and their applications in aerospace. Then, the derived SEJE concept is described and applied in the form of an expert workshop on the use case of wing morphing architecture. As a result, a solution space of wing morphing architecture configurations is generated and analyzed. The workshop conduction and the expert feedback serve as valuable findings for both the further AMA enhancement and similar research.

Automated summary

Disruptive technologies and novel aircraft generations are seen as potential solutions to achieve ambitious emission reduction goals in aviation. However, the introduction of innovative concepts can be time-consuming and may not produce the optimal design within the given timeframe. To overcome this, the Advanced Morphological Approach (AMA) was introduced, which involves decomposing design problems, evaluating alternatives, and projecting solutions onto a solution space. This paper focuses on integrating structured expert judgment elicitation (SEJE) techniques into conceptual aircraft design with AMA, and applies it to wing morphing architecture.