From Functions to Structure: towards Architectural Innovations in Aeronautical Products using Energy Flow Approach

Abstract The design of an aerospace product is a long and complex process because of the various involved stakeholders and the necessary multidisciplinary activities. The associated product development plan is organized in major steps separated by milestones ending with the final delivery to the customer. The early steps define the high-level concepts that will drive the complete product lifecycle, incorporating the Production System and its Support System. One of the major challenges the aerospace industry currently faces consists in the ability to adapt production rates to match the market demand. The study presented here is related to this problematic and aims at proposing solutions to this challenge, through the formalization of the links between the Preliminary Design phase of the product and the implied evolution of its Production System. The paper describes a method based on the analysis of the energy flows exchanged by a system with its environment, and within the system. Starting from a traditional functional analysis, a CTOC (Convert, Transmit, Operate and Control) model of the product is created with the desired abstraction level. This model allows the designer to build an ideal energetic vision of the product with the aim to retrieve a diagram of the system’s energy flows. It is then possible to identify in a comprehensive manner the energy links between functional blocks and physical components of the product and to extract from that the minimum list of required assembly operations. The use of a Conceptual Design for Assembly method (CDfA) finally enables to define the minimum assembly operations necessary and to evaluate and optimize the associated assembly sequences very early in the development, i.e. during architectural design phases.